‘Don’t talk so stupid.’
His voice had been breaking with emotion, and I had to shout at him. But really I needed silence, to absorb what he’d said.
Michael Orton, my wife’s husband of a year, and he’d been playing around the whole of that time...Lord, but it was lovely, or tragic. I had to have silence in order to decide which.
‘What’s so stupid about it?’ he demanded. ‘Once you’ve been inside, they’ve got you pegged.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘The first thing they’d do...’
‘She’d be frightened of you,’ I told him, seeing now the man who could be capable of smashing my head in with a spanner. This Tony Clayton looked capable of anything.
‘You see!’ he shouted. ‘You, now!’
‘And why not me?’ I demanded. ‘Why should you expect sympathy and understanding from me? What the hell do I care if your wife leaves you because she’s terrified of you! She knows what you did to me. I’d be scared, in her shoes. I bet she couldn’t get away fast enough...’
He reached forward and grabbed my arm and thrust his face close, and for one moment I thought he was going to attack me again. But it was pain I saw in his eyes. Entreaty.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘And you know it.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘I didn’t beat your head in, you fool, and if you’d just tell somebody the truth...’
I looked down at his hand, and rather to my surprise he released me. I couldn’t see what he was getting at, what he wanted from me.
‘I can’t remember that last day,’ I told him. ‘Certainly nothing of the attack on me. But the police say they caught you standing over me, stuff from the briefcase scattered everywhere...’
‘So you think it was me?’
‘Yes, I think it was you.’
‘But you didn’t come looking for me, with a couple of hired thugs at your shoulders.’
‘The thought didn’t occur to me.’
He grinned sloppily. ‘You see. It didn’t occur to you. And you know why not? Because you know. Mate, don’t shake your head at me. You know damn well it wasn’t me bashed your head in.’
I couldn’t follow his logic, but he stood back, as though displaying himself for my consideration. It was quite true that I felt no certainty about him, but there was no memory that assisted me one way or the other. Yet his confidence was infective. He knew he was innocent. You could see it. And he was so completely guileless that I couldn’t help smiling at him.
‘I wish you could prove it,’ I told him.
For some reason he sensed this as a victory, because he leaned forward and gave me a small thump on the shoulder with his fist. ‘You see.’
What I saw was that he seemed to feel some bond between us, sealed by the assault on me. He felt us both to have been victims, and that this entitled him to my friendship and assistance.
‘So what do you want from me?’ I asked quietly, probing.
‘I want you to find my wife.’
‘But I can’t possibly...’
‘You’ve got the experience, going round asking questions, making enquiries. You could do it.’
He was looking at me with raised eyebrows, his eyes wide with innocence. And yet he seemed to be poised, waiting on each word.
‘Not your books, then?’ I asked cautiously.
‘Those too. Find my missus, and she’ll tell you about the books...’
And about why the garage had done so well in his absence? That must have been galling to him.
‘I can try.’
‘Good man.’
‘But promising nothing.’
‘You’ll know where to ask around.’
But that was something he could do himself, and he’d know her haunts and habits better than me. I was not a detective. But there was a glint in his eye as he watched my indecision, and I could see it was important to him.
It was then that I began to wonder whether in fact he had killed his wife.
I looked away. ‘I’ll ask around.’
After all, it would have been a good cover for him. Would a man who’d killed his wife ask the man who should be his enemy to try to find her? It would appear to be the gesture of an innocent man. His innocence glowed from his warm, open face, and I found myself completely distrusting him.
He clasped his arm round my shoulder. ‘Let’s go and have a look at that car of yours,’ he said, his own business apparently disposed of happily.
2
The psychiatrists had explained that loss of memory following severe concussion was caused by the brain’s automatic desire to reject the memory of pain. Usually, only the instant of pain is lost, but in my case it was most of the day. This seemed to mean that my brain required to forget it all, so perhaps it was not a good idea to try to recall it. All the same, following Clayton down the outside staircase, I realised that what I had to do was not primarily to find his wife, but to find myself. That it might prove painful was not an encouraging thought, but I knew I could not go on as I was, with a gap that could be critically important to me. I had to reassemble that day. Perhaps I would come across Mrs Clayton on the way.
At the foot of the staircase we turned sideways through a small door of corrugated iron, and at once I was somewhere I knew. The operative areas of garages are all much the same, the hydraulic lifts, the power tools, the electronic tuning equipment, the overall smell of petrol and stale oil and dirt. But I knew this one. I had been there.
The sliding double doors that opened on to the yard were only partly open, and were the principal source of light. Where work was being carried out they used portable lights that confined the illumination to a square yard or so, so that the surrounding shadows were heavy. An engine suddenly burst into ragged voice, and there was a drift of burnt-oil smoke from the side until it spluttered to a stop. A spanner clinked on concrete, a voice cried from underneath a van for a five-eighths socket, and a hand-held electric drill was switched on, followed by a scream of metal. I saw Clayton’s lips moving, but heard nothing. The whine ceased raggedly, and he was shouting: ‘...over in the corner.’
We did a circle round the hydraulic lift, which had a Marina on it, the drill operative standing underneath trying to remove the rusted remains of its exhaust system. I didn’t recognise him. He was wearing a face mask against the dust. It caught my throat as we moved past. We walked round Clayton’s air-compressor, a squat cylinder of green metal with its V pump throbbing, and there, in the far corner, was my Volvo.
I could barely detect its colour through the accumulation of its grime. The windows were opaque. One rear tyre was completely flat, and the impression was that the springs had sagged. An illusion, I hoped. It looked sad and neglected, and resigned to sit there and rot away. Yet I nevertheless felt an upsurge of spirit, a small jerk of the heart. After all, it had been my image-maker, my uplifted two-fingered gesture to the world, mainly aimed at my wife, Valerie, who’d called it my macho symbol. Ridiculous that was. A small sports car might have been that, but not a trundling pile of Volvo. But it had been partly directed at my friends at the office, who’d seemed to place me apart from them in a way I couldn’t understand, and naturally accepted it as presumptuous that I should run such a large car and make theirs look puny beside it.
Looking at it, settling there into senility, I recalled these attitudes clearly, and my own reasons for burying it. My affection for it revived immediately. It was a 244 saloon, rather old, which I’d been able to buy quite cheaply because of its appetite for petrol, and which quite fulfilled my intentions following our battle over Valerie’s attempt to buy me a BMW. But I’d come to love its stolid reliability and its remarkably brisk performance for its size and age. It didn’t look particularly brisk at that time, but it was mine.
‘We’ll put it through the car wash,’ said Clayton, ruefully scratching his ear.
‘Better check the tyres, too,’ I suggested. ‘How lon
g...’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll run over and tax it...owe you that much,’ he conceded, without actually admitting the assault. ‘I’ll get the battery on the charger right away.’
I grunted. He was being effusive. Then I had a thought, and glanced at him. ‘It’s been taking up space for over a year. What about the garaging fees?’
He laughed. ‘Oh...that!’ Then the drill chatter interrupted and he shook his head, waiting for it to stop, then turned and led the way out through the double doors. ‘All covered,’ he said, when we could hear each other. ‘It’s been paid every month.’
‘Has it? Has it now!’
‘By your ex, I understand. So the missus said.’
‘Val paid my storage on that car?’
‘So my wife told me. She thought it was funny...you know, amusing...Michael Orton seeing the cheque come in every month, from his wife, on your car. Don’t you think that’s funny, Mr Summers?’
It was the first time he’d used my name, and he’d added the respect, as it would seem to him, of the mister. But I had no time to consider it, my mind being locked on to Valerie’s strange behaviour. She’d hated the Volvo as a childish gesture on my part, but she’d nevertheless made sure it’d be here for me. She must have had faith that I’d eventually be in a position to claim it. And she must have understood how much it meant to me.
Troubled by this thought, I left him, walking round to the forecourt and setting off back up the hill again. This time the concern was not related to my memory, because there was no uncertainty about what I could remember of Val’s attitude. What troubled me was that I might have misread her feelings, if only in such a small matter as the Volvo. But it was in the past. The decree had come through, and she’d married Orton. Over. Finis.
I plodded back up the hill and past the Winking Frog, to where I could get a bus back into town. It was time I made a courtesy call at my former office, past time. The visit to the garage had at least aroused an interest in my existence.
They had built us a new office a few years before, just on the edge of town and facing the park. By built, I mean they’d laid out a concrete patch and placed the pre-fab building on it with cranes. The result was bright enough and almost convenient to the public, but the large expanses of glass meant lowered shades against the draughts in winter and lowered shades against the sun in summer, so that the staff worked almost permanently by artificial light. Not that this affected the Inspector, who was supposed to be out and about most of his working day, though to the others the old Victorian dump we’d been in before became suddenly attractive in retrospect. But I’d liked the new place, with my office right next to the canteen, and therefore close to innumerable cups of tea. And, thinking of canteens, I realised I still hadn’t had any lunch. Oh well, maybe I’d qualify, as an ex-member of the staff, to a meal at my old office.
I used the main entrance, straight into Reception. There were two short queues, and two clerks at the counter, one of whom I knew. I turned sideways to the door marked Private, and at once a voice was raised. ‘Not that door, please.’
I turned. It was Maureen. ‘It’s only me,’ I said, and she wiggled her fingers, grimacing a smile at me and reaching for the phone with her other hand. I slid through the door and into the corridor at the foot of the stairs. Downstairs were the two main benefit sections, upstairs the senior staff and contributions section, my own territory. I took my time up the stairs. In the corner at their head was the canteen, not very big, catering for a staff in the forties. Next to it, my old office, marked Inspector. Then the Deputy Manager, Local Insurance Officer, and Manager.
Claud Martin. As managers go, not too bad, but humourless. That was how I remembered him, a strictly-by-the-book man, but you could trust him to support you if you found yourself in trouble with headquarters. Not a friend, but a firm colleague.
I tapped on his door and put my head in. He was just replacing his phone.
‘Cliff! How splendid to see you.’
He was round his desk in a flash, right hand extended, left one raised to grip my shoulder. He was taller than I remembered, and I realised I’d normally seen him seated behind that desk. His grip was firm, and then he stood back, eyeing me.
‘You’ve put on weight, but you look well.’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘We thought you’d forgotten us.’
‘You knew I was back in town, then?’
‘We knew they’d let you out on an unsuspecting world,’ he said, beaming. Then he gave a little bark of what could have been laughter.
It was a strange thing to say. He was positively skittish. I wondered whether I’d unsettled him, but couldn’t see how. ‘That was nearly a month ago,’ I said.
‘But we didn’t know you’d come back to this district.’ Then, possibly feeling exposed out there on his bit of SEO carpet, he retreated back to his swivel chair.
I didn’t know whether he expected me to take a seat, but he was making me feel uneasy, so I didn’t. ‘Well...it’s my home town,’ I reminded him.
‘Yes. Of course. But still...’
Surely he wasn’t embarrassed about the divorce. ‘All my friends are here.’
He was silent, spreading his hands on the desk and counting his fingers. True, I’d have difficulty chasing up a close friend, but he didn’t have to appear so dubious. I edged towards the door.
‘Thought I’d have a word with the ones here,’ I said.
‘You do that, Cliff. Go the rounds.’
‘And if you don’t mind...have a bite of lunch.’
He laughed again, so emptily and with such effort! ‘And make sure you don’t pay. I’ll see to that. It’s the least we can do.’
I nodded, grimaced, and got out into the corridor all of a sweat, because that was another funny thing for him to have said. Did he mean that a free lunch cancelled out the loss of my job? I shrugged it off, and walked along the corridor into Contributions Section. Here were the ones I knew best, Ben Thomas still supervisor, Jennie and Coral and the rest. The word had gone ahead of me. They crowded round, shook hands, grinned in bemused embarrassment. It was all very formal, and somehow cool. I left there, put my head into the Deputy Manager’s office, which was empty, and said hello to Frank, who was the present Local Insurance Officer.
‘I hate this bloody job,’ he said, as though I’d volunteer to take it over. But of course he’d hate it. Frank had always been a fine supervisor, but as LIO he had to make legal decisions. It would terrify him.
Downstairs, in the main benefits sections, it was noisier, and there were a few faces I didn’t know. There was a new woman supervisor on A-K. She didn’t know me, but knew of me, and pouted in my direction, possibly because I was distracting her section. But there was sympathy in the concerted reaction, and I didn’t want that. Not many Inspectors were brutally assaulted, and it was this distinction they welcomed. Not Cliff Summers, who’d worked with them a number of years.
I had left the Inspector’s office until last, partly, I think, because I was afraid of it. It had been mine, and its ambience had become part of my life. But in the end I had to look in. No doubt it would be empty, the present Inspector out on the job. So I didn’t tap on the door, just walked in.
A woman was working at my desk, files spread around her, her left hand supporting her head, the fingers mangling her hair. She turned as she heard me.
‘Who the devil are you?’ she demanded.
One person the news hadn’t reached. I smiled. Nothing false in this welcome. ‘I’m Cliff Summers. Used to work here.’
Then she got to her feet and smiled and stuck out her hand. ‘I’ve heard about you.’
She’d have been in her mid-twenties, nearly as tall as me, which put her at around five-eight, a gangling, awkward young woman, all angles and corners, with a square, attractive face and a large jaw. Her mouth was wide, the teeth prominent when she smiled, and her eyes were that deep, innocent cornflower blue that make it difficult to look away from.
‘I’m Nickie,’ she said. ‘Short for Nicola.’
I said I was pleased to meet her, and asked how long she’d been doing the job (a year) and whether she liked it (not this bit, with a gesture to the paperwork). Clearly, she was my type of Inspector. She sat down again and I drew up a chair, feeling relaxed and comfortable.
‘I’ve just been reading one of your minutes,’ she told me. ‘You didn’t mince words, did you?’
‘Which one’s that?’
‘Two years ago. The Cartwright case. You had to go round to the accountant’s office to get a sight of the books.’
I shrugged. ‘He’d been playing hard to meet for a fortnight. An old friend of mine.’
‘You put here: “Watch this man, I think he’s a crook.” I mean, it was risky, putting that in writing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Not libel, I wouldn’t think, because the files are confidential.’
‘It’s an interesting legal point,’ she admitted seriously.
‘And anyway, at that time my marriage was breaking up.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘He was one of the reasons. He’s now married to my ex-wife. At the time, it amused me to write that.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Amused?’
‘And anyway, he was a crook. Still is, I wouldn’t be surprised.’
She laughed. She’d held it too long and it burst out as an unrestricted bark that had me grinning.
‘You shouldn’t take me too seriously,’ I told her.
‘I’m not doing that.’
‘If you happen to come across him you’ll probably find him helpful and charming.’
She tapped the back of my hand in emphasis. ‘Charming, you mean, because I’m a woman?’ she asked shrewdly.
‘Well, he didn’t try to charm me.’ And suddenly I realised that I’d been remembering all this with ease, so naturally I smiled.
We looked at each other, and for a few moments there was no need for words. Then she pounced into the silence, jabbering away on a high pitch of excitement, or perhaps embarrassment. She was a gesturer, her hands flying, hair flying, shoulders moving with every emphasis, even her legs involved, stretched out, brought back, crossed. She was wearing a dark roll-neck sweater and a tartan skirt, with low-heeled, practical shoes.
Face Value (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 21