The Graveyard Position

by Robert Barnard

  “I can’t imagine Rosalind being a skillful car mechanic.”

  “Hardly any women before the present generation of young women would know their way around a car at all.”

  “Barnett, I suppose, might.”

  “Anyway, it’s something to think about,” said Charlie. “They took extensive DNA samples from the car and the area around it, but those will take a lot longer to be analyzed.”

  “The case continues,” said Merlyn, as they both rang off.

  “Something to think about,” Charlie had said. It was indeed. And Charlie’s call had focused his attention back on cars.

  Cleaning ladies did not tear off pages of a telephone notepad. All sorts of problems and difficulties could result if they did that, so it was more than their jobs were worth: those notepads were aide-mémoire for action, reminders of numbers to ring, accounts of important points of earlier telephone conversations. A cleaner who went around destroying pages on a notepad could be in serious hot water.

  Getting interested, he looked in the wastepaper baskets, which were all empty, then in the dustbins. Nothing.

  And then there were other things floating around in his mind: the fact that in the late seventies Hugh Cantelo was working for BP; there was the car broken down on the road to Shipley; and he wondered about the workforce at Cantelo Shirts.

  In the end there was no alternative but to sleep on it. He got to sleep quite easily, but his dream was a disturbing one: it was of an old man in bed, waving him away as if to say, “Put him in the Bastille,” or “Throw him into the Bosphorus.” And as he paused at the bedroom door and turned, he saw the old man pull back the bedclothes and raise his nightshirt as if to expose himself. It was an uneasy sleep.

  Merlyn had a shower next morning under that same generous stream of water he had thought about the night before, which refreshed him mightily. As he made his breakfast and ministered to Dolly’s needs he wondered whether he was disturbed by his grandfather’s rampaging sexuality in his last years—not just its inappropriate objects, but the fact of it. He doubted whether Old Man Cantelo wore a nightshirt—unless of course the family firm marketed a line in them.

  He had the ideal excuse for visiting Renee: she hadn’t been paid for yesterday’s work. He wondered whether to take Dolly, who wouldn’t be of any help that he could imagine, and might even be a hindrance. Then he remembered that he had taken her before, and she might establish in Renee’s mind the notion that this visit was of no more significance than that one had been. He got her lead, endured her look of skepticism that said, “I hope I’m not going to be walked to death this time,” then took her in his arms and went out the front door, locking it behind him.

  He let Dolly down onto the pavement when he was beyond the Headingley Stadium area, and she seemed pleased to be out of the arms of someone who was clearly not skilled in the art of dog carrying. When he got to Kirkstall View he looked for the woman who had been gardening on his previous visit, but obviously the tiny apron of front garden didn’t need much work on it. He was sorry, because a talk with her could have been useful. He continued on down and rang the doorbell at number eleven.

  “Oh, Mr. Docherty—” began Renee, a sort of turban around her sparse hair, still not entirely ready for a new day. Merlyn switched to casual apologetic mode.

  “I would have left your money yesterday if I’d known I was going to be so long,” he said. Since Renee showed no signs of standing aside he managed to let fall the dog lead as he fumbled in his pockets for the cash, and Dolly obligingly ran through the hall and into the little sitting room they had talked in before. Renee went to get her, and Merlyn followed as if he needed no invitation.

  “Now, sit quietly until we’ve finished,” he said to Dolly, who on occasion could decide to obey him. “It was eighteen we decided on, wasn’t it? Here’s twenty. I could see you did a lot beyond the call of duty: the place was looking very spic-and-span.”

  “Well, it only needed a going-over,” said Renee, not sitting down, “but it’s very generous of you.”

  “The house must have brought back memories, I suppose,” said Merlyn, sinking into a chair. Renee reluctantly sat down too. Her face was now screwed up, seemingly involuntarily.

  “Not so’s you’d notice. I never had any particular feeling for the house. Just for your aunt Clarissa. She was a lady there was not very many like.”

  “She was. That’s how I felt about the place—it was her that drew me there. Still, I’ve just been looking around the house as a piece of merchandise—how much will it sell for?—without an ounce of sentiment. With Clarissa gone, there isn’t really any call to feel sentimental about it.”

  “Pity you didn’t come back and visit her, then,” said Renee, with an unusual touch of tartness. Merlyn had the notion that she did not feel strongly about his supposed neglect of his aunt, just a dislike of his presence and a desire to get rid of him.

  “She didn’t want it. Absolutely forbade it. Wanted people to assume that I was dead. I brought it up quite often in our weekly telephone conversations, but she was adamant.”

  Renee’s face had fallen. She felt she had been wrong-footed, and hastened to make amends.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It was uncalled for. I didn’t know you and she had kept in touch.”

  “We did. Quite enough to know she wasn’t suffering from Alzheimer’s, as some of the family pretend to think.”

  “Oh, them,” said Renee disgustedly. “They think what they want to think, and pretend it’s the truth.”

  “I think you and I have pretty similar views of the Cantelos,” said Merlyn. “Your daughter worked for us for a time, didn’t she?”

  There was the tiniest of pauses. But Renee was a sharp woman, and perhaps a cunning one, and she knew a longer pause would give something away, make Merlyn suspicious where maybe he was not already. She smiled a social smile.

  “Of course—that was before your time at Congreve Street, wasn’t it? Before you came to stay, anyway. She worked in the shirt factory for a bit. Quite well paid, but she didn’t like it much. She preferred dealing with people. She went to work in the K-Supermarket, and she’s done quite well. She’s a supervisor now, and one of their longest-serving employees.”

  “Oh, that’s very good. And having a stable marriage must help a lot. People keep chopping and changing these days, but it doesn’t seem to make them any happier.”

  There was no answer for a bit, then Renee said bleakly, “I only had ten years. I don’t know how things would have turned out if my Norman hadn’t died.”

  “I get the impression Clarissa thought she was better off remaining unmarried,” Merlyn said. “But that’s the sort of thing none of us can say for sure, isn’t it?”

  Renee nodded.

  “That’s right. You can never know what would have happened if you’d done something different in the first place.” There was a wistfulness in her voice. Merlyn looked at her and then stood up. It was time to be off.

  “By the way, I’m thinking of buying an old car to get me back to Brussels and then get rid of it.”

  “Oh yes?” There was already a trace of defensiveness in her voice, which told Merlyn a lot.

  “I thought—I can be a bit of a sentimentalist about some things, you know—that I might see if Aunt Clarissa’s old car is still on the market.”

  Renee came back quickly: “She got rid of that a while ago. Six months maybe.”

  “That’s right. There was a note about that on the telephone pad, but you seem to have tidied it away yesterday.”

  A tiny red spot appeared on her upper cheekbone.

  “Oh no, I’d never have done that. It could have been important. A cleaner just cleans and tidies. She doesn’t destroy things.”

  “But the page on the top—a note by Aunt Clarissa, to ring a number and get rid of the car—was there yesterday morning but gone yesterday evening.”

  Renee was not good at lying, or thinking quickly.<
br />
  “Well…it seems funny. But all sorts of members of the family and others have probably had the key to the house.”

  “I changed the locks.”

  “Well, maybe you just tore it off yourself—absentminded-like. I know I do that sometimes.”

  “But it wasn’t in the wastepaper baskets or the dustbin…. Your son-in-law runs a garage, doesn’t he?” There was silence. “One of your neighbors talked about his being out to a breakdown on the road to Shipley last time I came here. Could you tell me his telephone number, Renee?”

  “It’s 240-7658.” The voice was lifeless. Merlyn felt sure it was the number on the pad.

  “That was it. So Aunt Clarissa got rid of her car through your son-in-law’s garage?”

  “She may have done. What does it matter?”

  “Maybe not at all. Except that you didn’t want any connection between them to suggest things to me. Suggest what? I wonder.” Merlyn went to the window and looked out, up toward the next house. Then he became conscious of noise. Of shouting. Of several voices raised and competing with each other in their decibels of vociferation.

  “That’s your daughter’s house, isn’t it? The next one up the road. There’s some disturbance there.”

  Renee sighed.

  “’Appen. They don’t get on, our Patsy and Sam. They have our Gina living there with her two kids. That doesn’t help.”

  “‘Our Gina.’ But not his Gina, I’d guess.”

  Renee looked at him viciously.

  “Why can’t you mind your own bleeding business?”

  “I think this probably is my business.”

  “And what are you, then? A fucking marriage guidance counselor?”

  “Something like that, I suppose. I work for the Common Market.”

  “I tell you,” Renee shrieked, “keep out of my family’s business.”

  “At the moment they seem to be sharing it with the whole street.”

  As Renee shrank down in her chair, looking defeated, Merlyn left the little sitting room, pursued by Dolly, and went out the front door. In the open air the noise from next door seemed unbearable, a symphony of competing cacophonies. He went onto the street and along the road to the next gate. Farther on up the hill the woman he had spoken to before was back in her garden.

  “I wouldn’t get involved,” she shouted. “You might get hurt. They’re at it regularly, just like this. They’re violent people, especially him. They enjoy it.”

  Merlyn shook his head and pushed open the front door. The noise was mainly coming from the room to his right: a man’s voice—big, loud, and brutal. Words like whore and scrubber were being used, and being countered by shrill accusations.

  “And what about that Jackie Marsden, then? Don’t tell me you haven’t been having it off with her!”

  The subsidiary noise came from the kitchen. The young woman he had seen earlier at the bus stop had herded her two children in there, she apparently used to the family wars, they still young enough to be distressed by them.

  “Stop whining, Katie. You should be used to it by now. It doesn’t mean owt. Stop that whining now or you’ll feel the back of my hand. And stop that, Jerry—stop clutching my legs like that. You know I don’t like it. You’re a big boy now. I’ll set your grandad on to you, then you’ll feel it. I mean it!”

  Merlyn looked sadly at this latest example of the Cantelo inability to bring up children. Then he swiveled forty-five degrees and stood in the doorway, observer of a war zone.

  “You just grab any opportunity to have it off with Kevin. Like bleeding goats, you are. Soon as I heard you’d invited him I knew what you were after, both of you. Silver wedding? More like plastic, and then you’d be overcharging. And then to find you’d actually booked a room for yourselves! Talk about bleeding brazen! Nothing like a bit of comfort, I suppose you thought.”

  “No, there’s not. We’re not like you. You’ll show off everything you’ve got in the open air—think it’s manly, don’t you? Brings back your youth. I bet you and Jackie were at it in the bushes around the car park. I bet some of the cars coming and going saw a few sights!”

  The expression on Sam’s face suggested she had scored a bull’s-eye.

  “Well, what if we were? I’d spent two bleeding hours listening to that dimwit Kelly saying, ‘Kevin’s a long time getting the drinks,’ and ‘I hope that lobster didn’t disagree with my Kevin’s stomach.’ Stupid cow! Some women don’t have the brains of a stick insect.”

  “We were never gone two hours!”

  “One hour fifty-two minutes, to be precise.”

  “Well, we had to get our money’s worth. I’d paid good money for that room.”

  “You had! You bleeding moron. You can’t think much of yourself if you had to do the paying. Women! They’ve lost all pride. Well, this is it. This is the end of the road. We’re finished, you and I. Finito. All washed up. Hail and farewell.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Merlyn, coming forward. “You enjoy it too much, don’t you? Can’t live with each other, and can’t live without each other. And it’s been like this pretty much since 1978, hasn’t it?”

  He came forward into the room. Sam swung around and saw him for the first time. His bulging eyes and outraged expression transferred themselves from his wife to the newcomer without strain or hesitation, and he continued clenching and unclenching his fists as if to emphasize his unchanging intention to get physical.

  “And who the fucking ’ell are you? And how did you get in here?”

  “Through the front door. And we have met. You sold me a car a week or two ago.”

  “I sell hundreds of fucking cars.”

  “I think you remember me, Sam. After all, I told you my name and my address. And you had reason to know where fifteen Congreve Street was.”

  “It was years ago Renee worked there.”

  “Years ago. Those are the operative words, aren’t they, Sam?”

  Sam had stopped his grunting gestures of aggression and his fists were still. Either because the presence of a third party acted as a barrier, or because some instinct of self-preservation had become operational.

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Years ago, when all this started. Back in the late seventies, when Patsy worked for Cantelo Shirts.”

  “I was only there a few months,” put in his wife, who was either being supportive or similarly self-preservational. “Didn’t suit me there.”

  “No, you didn’t like sitting over a machine all day, did you? Preferred being with people.”

  “That’s right. I did. Still do.”

  “Still, you got together with one person while you were at Cantelo’s, didn’t you? And you went right to the top.”

  Patsy seemed about to say that she didn’t know what he meant, but instead she locked her lips and looked away.

  “Which might have been all very well, might even have been profitable, but you were—what? engaged? married? just going with?—with someone of a very combustible nature.”

  “Speak bloody English,” said Sam.

  “Violent. You’ve got a violent nature, Sam.”

  “This is all old stuff,” the man said, his voice thickening in tone. “Dead as a doornail. Why come along now and rake it up?”

  “Not dead as a doornail, Sam. Because the result of Cantelo’s philanderings is out in the kitchen, isn’t she? And I bet she knows all about her origins. She’s probably used to it coming up in family rows since she was quite small and hardly understood.”

  The silence of the pair told him that was true.

  “So what were you at the time? Married?”

  “Engaged,” said Patsy.

  “And then the baby came along, little Gina. Wedding bells lined up at St. Paul the Evangelist, I suppose? And then a nasty little hitch arose. I would guess it was a question of blood group, wasn’t it? Little Gina was group A, and Sam started wondering why the baby should have a group which neither of her parents has. Doe
s a bit of asking round among friends and finds out it’s impossible she’s his child, because he and you were—what? Say O and B. Am I on the right lines?”

  They looked ahead stonily, but Merlyn noticed that Sam’s shoulders were heaving, and his hands clenching and unclenching again. He also noticed that Patsy was looking at him, probably wondering if the revelations that were being brought out into the open could be used to her advantage.

  “And so, when he’d got the truth out of you, Patsy, by the usual method of thumping you till you told him, one or other of you did the decent thing and got a bit of money out of the old man. No one would blame you, and he’d hate a paternity suit, wouldn’t he—an upright pillar of the community like old Cantelo?”

  “You’re way off the mark there,” said Patsy. “He was stingy as hell. A measly thousand. Probably knew he hadn’t long to live. And not much of a good name left.”

  “Right. Too mean to arouse any gratitude, but then that probably wasn’t on the cards in any case. So Sam was still fuming that he’d been cuckolded by a seventy-three-year-old when he was approached.” He let the word sink in, then turned to him. “Weren’t you?”

  There was total silence, but the air around them seemed charged. Merlyn went on:

  “It was a member of the Cantelo family. My money would be on Hugh. More or less in the trade, working for BP. Inevitably the story of Patsy’s fall had got around in the little circle of the unhappy family, and they’d got to the point of deciding that something had to be done about the old man, and even to selecting who would be the one to do it. And Hugh, or whichever it was, thought he saw a way of getting the job all the family wanted done—or nearly all of it—by calling in help from outside. The family would be instant suspects, but you would be much less so, particularly as the pregnancy had been accepted as the result of your well-known relationship. Maybe Hugh threw in a generous inducement. But maybe he didn’t need to, because you so wanted to pay the old lecher back. Hugh told you a time when Cantelo would be alone in the house, he established that you could get hold of Renee’s key, and then he left it to you. And so you went, and you did it: you let yourself in, went quietly upstairs, and when you found old Merlyn Cantelo sleeping in his bed you took a pillow—or perhaps you’d brought one with you—and you suffocated him. Possibly he hardly even struggled. If he did he’d have been no match for you. Then you went and let yourself out. Job done—to your satisfaction, and also to the Cantelos’.”