She was rising to her feet, forcing me to mine.
‘Why did you come here?’ she demanded, now fully in control of herself.
‘Tony asked me...’
‘As though he would. You’re the last person he’d ask.’
‘I didn’t understand why,’ I admitted. ‘But now...I can’t go back to him and tell him nothing.’
‘I want you to leave. I want you to promise...’ She gave a short bark of scorn. ‘But what’s the use of that! Once before, I trusted you...’
‘What the hell did I promise?’ I shouted.
She set her lips and stared me down. ‘My life’s my own. I can do what I like with it.’
But she couldn’t. Not any more.
‘If you stay here,’ I said quietly, ‘I’m afraid you’ll soon have company. The police will want to see you, and I can’t keep what I know to myself.’
She was staring at me blankly. I plodded on, feeling desperate..
‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid George isn’t coming back. That was what I really came to see you about. He’s dead, Tessa. And the trouble is that it’s not simple at all. There’s a question of violence, you see. Tessa, he’s been murdered.’
Not one person had used the word murder, but George’s head had been bashed in, and he couldn’t have tied himself inside that bag. Tessa was screaming as I made that logical deduction. I didn’t dare to touch her, could only stand there staring at her, waiting for it to stop.
It did. Abruptly. The walls rang with it. She stood, still and unbroken. I said:
‘I haven’t got a car, so we’ll have to walk round the factory...’
‘You’d better leave,’ she said in a firm voice. ‘Go away. Don’t even say you’ve been here.’
Oh Lord! I thought. Now what? ‘If I leave here, it’ll have to be to phone the police. Now Tessa...you don’t want a couple of dirty great policemen bundling you into their car.’ I grinned at her, my mouth feeling stiff, trying to force her into facing reality.
‘Then you do that,’ she challenged, nodding. ‘Just do it.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She stood there, staring at me with her eyes dark and haunted, and that was what she wanted. I ran a hand down the back of my head.
‘I meant it, you know.’
She smiled. It was so terrible that I turned away to the door, almost too anxious to get out of there.
Just before the door closed behind me I thought I heard her say: ‘Don’t they call it protective custody?’ But I could have been wrong.
I clattered down the stairs and into the street, then walked away rapidly. I determined not to glance upwards, but couldn’t prevent myself from doing it. She was white-faced at the window. I walked on, finding myself stumbling into a run. Abruptly, I was thinking that she’d got rid of me in order to take her own life. There was nothing for her now, with George dead, I told myself. Yet she must have known he was dead, I assured myself. A drug addict would not have remained silent for over a year, I reasoned...but she would have clung to the possibility.
I ran, knowing I should have stayed with her.
The phone booth on the corner was being repaired. Now I didn’t know which way to turn. I looked frantically up and down the main road. They say you can’t find them when you want them, but for me it wasn’t so. A police patrol car was touring towards me. I ran out into the street, waving.
They knew how to handle frantic customers. Into the car with me, and the barest details. A woman – an address. The car thumped to a halt at the house and the three of us ran up the stairs. The door was open. She was sitting in the chair again. She calmly turned her head, making a complete fool of me.
‘That was quick,’ she said.
8
I think I’ll write a monograph on fear. Certainly I was getting enough experience. I’d made up my mind that she’d been about to die, and that it would have been my fault. That was my fear, and it would have haunted me all my life. But mine went away with the reality; hers was still with her. It had simply graded itself from fear to resolution, then to resignation.
She made no objection to going down and sitting in the police car, where names were taken and the radio was brought into use. The presence of both of us was requested at the station. At once. This necessitated the use of both the winking lights and the siren, a stimulating experience through which Tessa sat unmoved.
At the station she was at once escorted upstairs. I was left in the duty office, sitting on a hard bench and memorising the wanted posters. Twenty minutes later, Tony Clayton set the swing doors thumping. I jumped to my feet.
‘You found her!’ he cried. ‘I knew you could do it.’
‘We’ll have to talk,’ I told him urgently, but there wasn’t time for that because the duty officer was coming round the desk.
‘They’re waiting for you, Mr Clayton. First floor and to your right. The Chief Inspector’s room, sir.’
I was alone again for another half an hour, until I became aware that Bill Porter was standing in front of me. I looked up.
He was in his shirt sleeves, tie hanging loose, looking relaxed and weary, and disappointed in me.
‘You knew where she was, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘Last night. You damn well knew, and you said not a word.’
‘Only guessed. It was just an idea, Bill.’
He jerked his head. ‘We’d better talk. Care for coffee? The canteen’s not much, but it’s always open. Come on.’
We sat opposite each other across a small table. I drank mine staring at the thinning patch on the top of his head. He kept stirring and stirring at his coffee, though he hadn’t sugared it, then he looked up suddenly. ‘Guess what she’s saying, up there.’
I shrugged. ‘She’s telling everybody that I made her a promise, and I didn’t keep it.’
‘No mention of promises.’
‘What promise, Bill? Surely she said that.’
‘Something else you’ve forgotten?’ he asked with interest.
‘How do I know it’s the truth? There might not have been a promise.’
He looked at me steadily for a moment or two, then he shook his head wearily. ‘Why don’t you keep out of this, Cliff? It doesn’t concern you. All right...the body was in your car...’
‘Have you made positive identification?’ I interrupted.
He thrust his cup aside. ‘I’m trying to cut down on sugar, but I can’t stand this.’
‘Anything certain?’
‘On the body? It seems so. There was a tattoo on the right arm. Well...not a tattoo really. They did it in ball-point.’
‘Who did?’
‘This group, gang, whatever you care to call ‘em. Their name: The Hellcats. Did it in red, green and blue ball-point on their forearms. About a dozen of them. One of those macho things. But there it was, well-preserved because of the cast. Hellcats, on his arm.’
I considered this. ‘But still...a dozen. Could be any one of them.’
‘Unlikely. There’s the crushed arm, you see.’ One corner of his mouth twitched. ‘We’d like to know how he got his arm crushed.’
‘I know that...’ I stopped. No, I didn’t know it. All I knew was an unreliable memory of what he might have told me. ‘On his right arm, you said?’ I asked. ‘This tattoo thing.’
‘It’s what I said.’
‘If they did it themselves, it means Peters was left-handed.’
‘Oh...clever, clever.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘If it can possibly matter.’
‘It’s just that I remember him as left-handed.’
‘This memory of yours...’
I detected in his voice a hint of contempt for the emphasis I was putting on its accuracy. Porter was perhaps a little short on imagination. He would never be afraid.
‘Get you another coffee, hero?’ I asked.
His eyes opened wide. ‘It’s my canteen. I’ll get ‘em. And watch your tongue.’
When he came back with fresh cups I told him to
use sugar this time. ‘You’re sour enough as it is, Bill.’
‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘Why’re you getting at me?’
‘Maybe I’m a little tired. Sorry.’ I stirred my coffee. ‘What’s she been saying, up there?’
‘Oh...that! The reason she went missing. You can imagine, it had to be good, with her husband there, quivering all over and worried to hell. She could hardly say she was scared of him.’
‘What did she say, then?’
‘That it was you she was scared of. That she’d heard you had the idea it was George who’d clobbered you. And she thought her lovely boy might turn up, hearing you were around the town, and you might have it in for him. So she waited for him round at his bed-sitter, to warn him...what’s funny, damn it?’
‘It was an idea I’d thrown at her. My idea, and she’s simply tossing it back.’
‘And she denied it?’ he asked with interest. ‘The clobbering.’
I thought about that, and shook my head. ‘She didn’t admit or deny it. How could she have known?’ He was looking unimpressed. ‘But surely the important thing is that she’s afraid of something or somebody. Just don’t let yourself be sidetracked by her, Bill. There could be a valid reason behind it.’
He drained his cup. ‘I’m a sergeant, Cliff. It’s not for me to get sidetracked. I take orders.’ He levered himself to his feet.
I grinned at him. ‘Such as now? Feeling out whether there could be anything in what she’s said upstairs?’
He put a hand to my arm and steered me towards the door. ‘Something like that, sport. Keep walking till you feel pavement under your soles. And that’s advice.’
Out in the duty office I turned to him. ‘Was Charlie Graham one of them, Bill?’
‘Those Hellcats, you mean? Could be.’
‘Can you give me his address?’
‘No.’
‘You mean you can’t or you won’t?’
He was still edging me towards the door. ‘Both,’ he said. Now get out of here.’
I stood out in the street and wondered what the hell to do with myself. I got a quick sandwich and a cup of tea, and I still did not know. I’d had a month of the same thing, wasting time around the streets, window-shopping, café-crawling. Funny, only a couple of days before it hadn’t seemed frustrating, merely boring. Now, the fact that I wasn’t doing anything was twisting my nerves and jerking at my reflexes.
I sat on a bench in the shopping centre and said to myself: ‘Right. What do you want to do, Cliff? Really want.’ The answer came back quite clearly and without hesitation. I wanted to find Charlie Graham and have serious conversation with him.
Then I found myself in the car park at the Social Security office, looking to see whether Nicola’s Golf was there. Fortunately it wasn’t, because I’d been tempted to ask her to look him up for me, when I knew that I didn’t want her to become further involved. It wasn’t just the fact that she was forbidden to hand out restricted information, it was something else.
The trouble was that I couldn’t clearly analyse what else it was. Something to do with the fact that I couldn’t be certain of my brain, and therefore of my mental stability – but deeper even than that. Far more basic. I was becoming more and more unsure of my personality. Who really was this man, who was using Charlie Graham as an excuse simply to meet Nicola again?
Not completely satisfied with this, I was turning away when she drove into the park.
She drew up beside me, swinging the door open. ‘Hello there,’ she said, straightening up beside me.
She was in slacks that day, fawn slacks with a brown cardigan and a little jacket. The briefcase – our briefcase – was in her left hand. Her face was alive with undisguised pleasure.
‘Looking for me?’ she asked.
‘Can’t keep away from the place.’
‘I bet. Coming in for lunch?’
‘Had it.’
She was considering me with her head on one side. ‘Come and watch me eat, then.’
‘I really ought to be getting along.’
A tiny frown ran across her forehead. ‘You’re a bit moody, aren’t you!’
‘I ought to be hunting out some transport.’
Instantly, concern clouded her face. Then she reached out and put a hand to my arm. ‘Oh Lord, and I’d completely forgotten. It’s all round the town. How terrible for you, Cliff.’
‘All round the town...’
‘There was a bit in last night’s paper.’
‘I didn’t see it.’
‘Why don’t you come up and talk about it?’ She spoke lightly, but her eyes were grave.
‘It’s gone past talking,’ I jerked out. ‘That woman in the room, the one in George Peters’ room, that was his mother.’
‘Oh heavens!’ She looked round. ‘We can’t stand here...’
‘I’ll see you...phone you...’
‘You don’t have to look for transport. There’s me.’
‘Oh come on, Nicola. You’ve got a job to do. All day.’
‘Annual leave. I’ve got leave due to me.’
I laughed. ‘Just trying telling Claud Martin that, with no notice. Look, you don’t have to get involved. There’s nothing to get involved with. Nothing.’
There was a trace of anger in her voice, because it was she who’d made the advances. ‘Please yourself. But if there’s nothing...why the rush to get yourself transport?’
A direct person expects a direct answer. I put into words the idea that was just beneath the layer of conscious thought. ‘I want to go and see my ex-wife.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see. Well...you can always reach me...’
It wasn’t exactly a toss of the head, just the way the wind took her hair and revealed the long smooth line of her neck. She had a strong bone structure to her face. It seemed a crushing loss that she was turning away from me.
‘Something I have to thank her for,’ I said ridiculously.
She turned back for a second, but didn’t say anything. Her quick smile was more of a grimace.
I took the short cut through the park to Regal Motors. The reason I went there was that they knew me. I’d once spent a couple of days in their office sorting out their books after their wages clerk had left abruptly, having fiddled the tax and insurance very expertly for the past three years. I say they knew me, but I didn’t expect a welcome.
‘Well, look who’s here,’ said Tom Oddie, their Sales Manager. ‘Looking for more bodies, Cliff?’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘No. Sorry. But you’ve made the headlines.’
‘Have I?’
It was early for the evening papers, but Regal Motors carried a half-page advertisement every day, and were entitled to an advance copy. I’d made the front page, I saw, though they had no picture of me, fortunately. One of the Volvo, though, on the frontage of Tony Clayton’s place. It made a nicely sensational story, now that the police had released the details. Ex-Inspector of Social Security discovers body in his car.
‘I’ll be parting with it,’ I said.
‘Can’t say I blame you.’
‘I could be asking you to make an offer, in part exchange.’
‘Hmm…’ said Oddie. ‘We’ll have to see.’
We went on a tour of his secondhand stock. I found an Escort I liked, and we had it up on a lift so that I could poke at the underside. He told me all its virtues, and I didn’t believe a word of it, but when we went for a tour round a few blocks it felt tight and responsive.
‘You’ll be wanting terms?’ he asked doubtfully, after I’d told him I liked it. He’d noticed the “ex” bit in the paper. People without jobs can’t afford to get into debt.
But my voluntary retirement had brought me half of what I would have received if I’d stayed on to the age of 6o; half because I’d done half my expected service. So I had a half pension, which meant a quarter of my salary, and I had also received half of my gratuity. There was a little capital in my bank.
<
br /> After I’d told Tom Oddie these interesting details, we got along fine.
‘When can I have it?’ I asked.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Give us an hour to service it. The tax is good for six months, and the insurance...’
‘The insurance on the Volvo covers me.’
So it was that easy. An hour. I walked in the park, then went back, and there it was, a deep, glowing red. I looked in the boot. Nothing. Oddie slapped my shoulder, laughing, and I drove it away.
On the way past, I dropped in at Aunt Peg’s to tell her where I was going, just in case Mr and Mrs Michael Orton asked me to stay for an evening meal. Fat chance.
‘Do you think you should meet her?’ she asked.
‘It’s all right, auntie. I’m safe now. She’s married.’
‘You’ll never be safe from her.’
As this was something I’d already considered, I didn’t argue.
You’ll need to know something about my ex-wife, Valerie, before you meet her. I’ll try to be unbiased, but I suppose I’ve always been biased where Val’s concerned. Most people seem to see only her hard and practical side. I find I can admire it. Val always understood money for what it is, a bedrock from which she could survey the world, with not a little contempt for its perpetual struggle to acquire the stuff. Val never had to fight for it; it fell in her lap. There to enjoy, so what the hell! But there were a hundred other facets to the jewel that was Val.
I first met her in Michael Orton’s office. At that time I’d been a year on the Inspector’s job, and still felt a bit green, yet knew I had to show no weakness to opposition. Later, I took things easier and never gave a thought to the warrant in my pocket, but just at that period I hadn’t acclimatised myself to the fact that a Government official is not really welcome in anybody’s life. It annoyed me to meet those blank and unresponsive faces, when I was making only reasonable requests. One of the difficulties was obtaining a sight of records when I needed to see them. Come tomorrow, they’d say. The wages clerk’s on leave. Or, in the case I was chasing up: the books are with my accountant.
Usually, this made life easier. An accountant recognises the necessity for the Inspector’s request, and is anxious to help.
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