A Death to Remember

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘You could do with a new suit,’ she told me severely.

  ‘Suits are for the birds. It’s jeans...’

  ‘And you will use your garbled English. There, how’s that?’ She was great with shirts, but it takes a man to press his suit. I told her it was marvellous and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘If that means you want to borrow money...’ she grumbled.

  ‘Not yet. I can still afford a bag of fish and chips.’

  So that when the horn pipped twice at the gate I got free without a promise to bring Nicola in. We’d have never got away...

  ‘The Swan at Mecklin,’ she said.

  ‘I heard it was fine.’

  Nicola drove her Volkswagen Golf GTI as though we’d entered the Monte Carlo Rally, relaxed, smooth, completely in control. We were halfway there before my aunt’s curtain could have twitched back into place.

  A failed TV director and his French wife had bought the Swan as a pub, and then flexed their imaginations. The simple bar meals had expanded. The kitchen had expanded. Now the straight drinkers had difficulty getting in, and were easily lured from the bar to the tables by the aromas. We ate wonderfully. She chatted and I listened, nodded, chewed. No shop. Her life and hopes and despairs. She was really a lost soul in the Civil Service, but she hadn’t realised it yet, so I didn’t say so. Nothing sufficiently creative for her. She was a natural loner, born to pick her artistic way through a procession of non-paying projects. Her independence would die a slow, inglorious death as a civil servant.

  It’s a lovely night,’ she said as we came out. She’d allowed me to pick up the bill. We drove, more sedately, back into town, and at last she spoke about the topic closest to both our thoughts.

  ‘A pity you didn’t get more time in that room.’

  ‘Yes.’ I glanced sideways at her. ‘But he’ll have been through it by now.’

  ‘That wasn’t the point, though, was it?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t really expect to find anything physical there, such as George Peters himself. It was a matter of arousing your memory.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘We’ll be passing Rock Street in a few minutes.’

  ‘I think we’d better do that,’ I told her. ‘Pass it.’

  ‘You did say the door was easy...’

  ‘Heh now! None of that.’

  ‘Now what could be the harm?’ she asked. ‘Just standing in an empty room and trying to remember. You wouldn’t even need to put on the light?’ It was a question.

  ‘We don’t know it’s empty.’

  ‘He wasn’t there a year ago, and that fits with what that chap said.’

  There was silence, because I was thinking about it, and she seemed to have dropped the subject. Then she said: ‘Did he own a motorbike?’

  ‘I don’t know. You mean the chap in the room? Why?’

  ‘There’s one been on our tail all the way from the Swan. Hold on a sec’.’

  Then she took a sharp left-hander and the engine grew throaty as she gave it a lung-clearing with her right foot, and for five minutes we left rubber marks around all the corners until she got us back to the main road.

  ‘He’s still there.’

  ‘Then that settles it,’ I decided. ‘Forget Rock Street.’

  ‘I thought you had.’

  ‘I have now. I’m not having you hanging around there while I creep up to that room...’

  ‘I thought I’d go up with you.’

  ‘No.’ I’d said that too sharply, and glanced at her in apology as she changed up abruptly. ‘I’d be better alone.’

  ‘Then you’re going to try it?’

  ‘If you’ll promise me something.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘You’ll keep moving, with the doors locked, round and round the block, or something.’

  ‘I could lose him, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think so. A bike can always hold a car. So please don’t try. Just drop me at the end of Rock Street and drive straight on. He’ll probably follow me, anyway. And much good may it do him.’

  But now she was doubtful, wanting to park nearer the house, but in the end she did as I wished. When she stopped for a couple of seconds at the end of Rock Street there was no sign of the motorbike.

  ‘You see,’ I said. She drove on. I walked along to number seventeen.

  It would have been difficult to find anywhere more depressing. In the dark the street really drew around itself its real character, withdrawn and suspicious, and unnerving. It hadn’t been too well provided with streetlights, but the locals had improved the situation by throwing stones at the ones they had, reducing them to two and a half, counting the flickerer. The lighted windows numbered five. I had to peer closely to check I was outside number 17.

  The front door opened at a gentle touch. There was no sound inside until I stood still in the lobby and listened, then only a distant dripping tap. I felt my way up the stairs, to the door of room C, and fished out my credit card. It was good now for nothing more than opening doors. It did that smoothly enough. Allowing the door to swing quietly shut behind me, I moved inside.

  Only the streetlamp four houses up lent me any assistance. The window was a pale glow. But I needed no light. I stood there, my feet feeling the thin sliver of carpet, and I could see, again, George Peters sitting at that table. I breathed deeply and slowly, allowing it to come more and more clearly. He’d had on a Fair Isle pullover and jeans. No shoes or slippers, just socks. His right arm was in a plaster cast. He was allowing its weight to hold down the minute sheet while he struggled for words. I’d offered to help him, but he was suspicious of my words, and it was bad policy to prime people. No, he wasn’t resting the cast on the paper, that was my right hand. I’d been standing at his shoulder, reaching past him, fingers spread...

  I, George Peters, state that...

  What the hell was he stating? Certainly not the withdrawal I’d seen in his file. State that...State that...

  ...I got my arm crushed when I was lying under this car. I’d got it on a pair of jacks, and the front wheels off, trying to change one of the steering ball joints. I’d been told...

  What had he been told? The image had faded. I dared not move, in case he got up from the table. I remembered, I had not dared to move, then, but that had been in case he backed out and refused to finish it. So why had I been holding my breath until he had it done? Had he been reluctant to tell me what had happened? But he must have told me, otherwise I wouldn’t have got round to asking him to put it in writing.

  ...nudged my car, and it was sliding...

  My car? Had he claimed it as his? Did he own a car? He’d been working on his car...but where? Surely it had to be at Pool Street Motors.

  My heart was racing as I realised the link I’d established, but my head was throbbing with the effort of forcing my brain to work. The images were becoming random and erratic.

  ...warned I ought to have it on a hydraulic lift, but Charlie Graham was using it...

  Charlie Graham! I rocked on the edge of the carpet, as though it could be the edge of a precipice. Now I had him, my friend of that afternoon. Charlie Graham.

  And at once, my mind having been distracted, the memory crumbled, and I was standing again in a dark room, the window faintly grey, the furniture dim and uncertain shapes, and my breathing heavy and slow. Then I realised it was not my breathing. Somebody was asleep in the bed.

  My awareness seemed to be telepathic. The breathing broke rhythm. A woman’s head rose against the window. I knew it was a woman because of the silhouette of the hair, and because a man cannot scream like that, so piercingly, so frantically.

  I reached behind and whipped open the door, and clattered in panic down the stairs.

  I did not see Charlie Graham until I was half-way down. As he was half-way up at the time, we met solidly. The impetus was mine, so that, with just one cry of surprise and anger, he went away from me backwards. I jumped over him at the bottom and paused, glancing back. He was s
tirring and groaning, so I ran into the street, just as Nicola screamed to a halt in front of me. The tyres matched the screams still coming from upstairs.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I shouted, yanking open the door.

  We took the next corner with the nose well in and the rear wheels hopping. She slowed, turning her head.

  ‘Why’re we running away?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re big enough to have handled him.’

  ‘There was a woman sleeping in that room.’

  ‘Are we running away from a screaming woman?’

  It was true that screams in Rock Street could be more normal than silence. I shrugged, though my pulses were still racing. ‘All right. Turn back if you like.’

  She grinned at me. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t warn you. But he came on foot, and I wasn’t expecting that.’

  I stretched out my legs, settling down, now. ‘I’ve been warned not to expose myself to stress.’

  ‘Poor you. That’s going to restrict your activities.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to have done me any harm, though. His name’s Charlie Graham, by the way. That chap. I remembered.’

  ‘Did you remember anything else?’

  ‘Some.’

  I told her what I’d recalled. As a completed statement by George Peters it could well have been an account of an accident he’d had, resulting in a crushed right arm. As he’d been telling it in reference to a claim to Industrial Injuries benefit, he’d plainly been claiming that the accident arose in the course of employment by somebody else. That somebody must clearly have been Pool Street Motors, which would explain why I’d phoned in to see what we had on them, and then gone along there after my lunch at the Winking Frog. Or so my logic dictated.

  But what George Peters had in fact written had not been a statement of an accident, it had been a withdrawal of his claim. At the realisation of what that meant I felt the hair prickle on my neck, and a shudder ran right down to my toes. If my memory was recalling incorrect facts, then my brain was wandering into the realms of fantasy. It was possible, as the psychiatrists had warned, that I was stressing my brain too soon.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Cliff?’

  I tried to smile. ‘How’d you like to meet my Aunt Peg?’

  ‘That’d be fine. Round off a quiet evening beautifully.’

  She was quite serious, I thought.

  4

  Aunt Peg rounded off the evening very well, attempting to prove she had as good a sense of humour as anyone, and dredging from her memory salacious stories of her dubious past. Nicola seemed drunk with laughter when I escorted her to her car. I kissed her on the end of the nose, mainly because I liked the way it tilted. Then I went inside and straight up to my room, at last able to settle down and face myself.

  I took my shoes off in order to pace in my socks, not wishing Aunt Peg to be disturbed. Finding me there, struggling with my mind, she would at once recognise I was distressed, and would have no difficulty drawing from me the reason. Yet how could I explain to her, when I couldn’t make sense of it myself?

  I remembered (it came to me unbidden, and from so far in the past that it could be treated as reliable, not being involved with recent distortions) that I’d for years used as an amusing tale at dinner parties the fantastic adventure that had befallen one of my school friends. Yet when I’d met him years later, and reminded him of it, he’d looked at me blankly. It had meant nothing to him.

  Memory is like that, I tried to encourage myself. It embroiders itself, tidying the loose details, trying to make sense and logic from a chaotic reality. So was I now to accept that my mind, with some excuse because of its battering, had altered the simple completion of a withdrawal notice into the more complex but explosive details of a statement? The fact was a withdrawal. Yet my brain wanted – demanded – that I be presented with a logical reason for having gone round, on that 16th November, to Pool Street Motors and apparently taken the place apart looking for trouble. So I couldn’t trust my memory.

  I’d had glimpses of what my personality might have been, and now had to accept that it could all be false.

  I could be anybody. I might even, in spite of the spontaneous vision in Nicola’s office, have accepted bribes.

  It was clear that I would have to start again from scratch. Try to forget what had already been recalled, and approach the whole thing slower and with more circumspection, sliding in on it from a different angle. If I dared.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, struggling with my courage. Already shaken, I found it far too easy to let it all go, and accept the loss of a day out of my life.

  But I wasn’t going to be able to let it go. My car was due for collection. I could not avoid another visit to Pool Street Motors.

  In the morning I told myself that it would seem indecent to appear there too early, but that wasn’t the real reason for taking my time. At ten I walked up to the garage, and for one wild moment, seeing the Volvo standing out there in the forecourt, I thought I might simply climb in and drive away. Then I noticed Clayton standing inside the self-service shop and watching me through the window. I had time to extend him my mental thanks for having saved me from stupid cowardice.

  They had cleaned it for me, and polished it even, and it stood there, four-square and with its tyres at proper pressures, as stolid and reassuring as ever. I walked round it, and stood back, strangely reluctant to slip behind the wheel. Then Clayton was at my elbow.

  ‘You’ll see I got it taxed,’ he said. ‘We filled the tank, put you a new battery in, and it’s going a treat. I ran it round the houses myself. Just great.’

  ‘It’s good of you.’

  ‘Did you fix up the insurance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never mind. I can do that. A year’s insurance on the house.’

  ‘The MOT...must’ve run out.’

  ‘Done it,’ he said with eager pride. ‘Relined the rear brakes and put you two new brake pipes in.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  I saw that the keys dangled in the ignition lock. My eyes had been on them for the last few minutes, as I had no wish to meet Clayton’s gaze, but nothing had been registering. Now it did. There were three keys.

  I opened the door and slipped them from the lock. One for ignition and the doors, a separate one for the boot, and the third...it was a cylinder lock key, which I recognised as the key to the side door at the Social Security office, my private key for when I’d needed to go there after hours. But it was here. I’d left it here, with the car.

  For a second my mind stumbled over it. When I managed to speak, it didn’t sound like my own voice.

  ‘Why was the car here?’ I asked. ‘You kept it here. Why?’

  Now I’d turned to face him. He looked startled. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘You know damned well I don’t.’

  ‘It wouldn’t start. You’d parked it over there, in the corner, when you came.’

  ‘On that day?’

  He nodded.

  ‘November the 16th, sixteen months ago?’

  He was shaking his head, my attitude baffling him. ‘That day, yes. You’d left it there. You were hours – bloody hours – mooching round the garage, seeing the lads at the back, arguing...’

  I had a thought. ‘Was one of them Charlie Graham?’

  ‘What? I don’t see...’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Of course. One of the lads here, that day.’

  ‘So I spoke to him?’

  ‘Spoke to him! Man, you had a right up-and-downer with him.’

  Clayton was smiling, though I could see nothing amusing.

  ‘You mean, we fought?’

  ‘As near as dammit.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘As though you don’t...all right, so you don’t. You were stirring things up, that’s what. Threatening this and that.’

  I sighed. I didn’t think I’d have done any threatening, but I let it go. I was feeling more rel
axed. One of my memories had been confirmed as fact. I knew Charlie Graham, and I’d met him. I didn’t want to pursue the rest at the moment.

  ‘Let’s get back to the car,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the gripe? I don’t see it.’

  ‘You said it wouldn’t start, so I left it here. Right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was wrong with it?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ He raised his palm at my expression. ‘All right! But how can I say, now? We didn’t get to it till yesterday. By that time the whole engine had to be checked. We found a loose wire on the coil – no, the distributor, it was – it could’ve been that. Now are you satisfied?’

  Far from it. I walked round the car again. It had never let me down before.

  ‘Or you could’ve over-choked it,’ he suggested.

  ‘Sure. I suppose I could.’

  But I’d left it there with the keys in, and God knows how long it’d been there before somebody pushed it round into the repair bay. That night and the next day must have been chaotic. But from there I had walked to the office. That much was fact; it was in the office car park, from which the side door opened, that I’d been waylaid. Now it appeared that I hadn’t even had the side door key with me. I had gone to the office when there was no point in it, unless I’d wanted merely to leave my briefcase there, and without a key to get in with. Were those facts?

  Partly to take my mind from it, to take things easily as I’d promised myself, I changed the subject. I turned to him and spoke pleasantly.

  ‘What’s this about a bribe?’

  To my surprise he was suddenly angry. ‘For God’s sake, you must know that!’

  ‘I don’t know it. I’ve been told. You said nothing yesterday, not a blind word.’

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘You chatted, and discussed your wife, with a bribe between us?’

  He stood there, looking like an embarrassed grizzly, and shook his head in disbelief. ‘You should’ve said,’ he pleaded. ‘Oh Lord, I dunno. How could you! If you want to know, it was right at the end. It all seemed stupid to me. I mean, you can’t walk in and calmly raise hell...But there you were, saying you’d have to do a lot more work on the books, and you wanted to take ‘em away. Got my goat, that did.’