‘Here,’ she said. ‘Let’s go into my office.’ She thrust the file at me.
I followed her along the corridor. No worry now about the lights being on. She sat me at the desk, the file in front of me.
‘And I suppose you want Charlie Graham’s address?’ she asked.
‘If you would,’ I said weakly.
For a moment she stared down at me, then she marched out. When she returned I still hadn’t opened the file. I hadn’t dared to, in case everything had changed inside there too.
‘There it is,’ she said, putting under my nose a piece of paper with an address on it. ‘Charles Vincent Graham, aged twenty-three. Sure to be him. Last incapacity two years back. Nasal sores and mucus excess.’
‘What?’ I said, lifting my head in surprise. ‘Is that a doctor’s version of a common cold?’
She drew up a chair. Our knees touched. ‘You’re a great innocent, Cliff. Those are the classic symptoms of cocaine sniffing.’
‘Oh Lord!’
I stared at the slip of paper. Would he still be at that address, I wondered.
‘Come on,’ said Nicola, wriggling in the chair. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘You con me into helping you, and you think you’re going to tell me nothing! Let me tell you...’
‘That’s the trouble, you see.’
‘What’s the trouble, for heaven’s sake?’
‘I’ve been to see my ex-wife. Ex, Nicola. Our marriage broke down. I don’t know what she’s like now – she’s changed a lot – but when we were married she was overbearing and wanted to run my life. That’s why it broke down. Opposites are supposed to attract. We didn’t. She accused me of being weak and stubborn. Damn it, Nicola, you don’t have to nod. Maybe I am. Weak...and stubborn because it’s the only defence I’ve got. I don’t know.’
‘Is this getting somewhere?’
She was frowning fiercely, and on Nicola a frown was powerful, bringing into play a whole range of creases and wrinkles that made her look like a fretful gnome.
‘It’s just that – seeing Val – it’s made me realise I’ve got to do this myself. On my own.’
‘You’re not making sense. Why did seeing your ex-wife make you realise that?’
‘You two, Val and you, you’re so much alike.’
‘In what way?’ Her voice was deep, dangerous.
‘You’re taking me over, Nicola. You’re bossing me. I’m sorry, but it might be that I shan’t like it. And then where’ll we be?’
Her mouth was all screwed up in such a way that I couldn’t tell what it meant. Then it unfolded itself, and she was laughing at me.
‘Oh, you poor dear. That depends where you want us to be.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said miserably.
‘Well...’ she said, ‘I do. So just let me do the deciding. Then, when you’re all sorted out, you can take over. All right? Say yes, damn you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Damn you.’
‘Right. Now start by telling me what’s happened.’
I told her what had happened, including my attempt to get a sight of the Pool Street Motors books.
‘And now you’ve told me,’ she said, ‘you can hardly refuse to let me help you.’
‘I can, you know.’
‘Why?’ she demanded forcefully. ‘You’re too damned awkward for words.’
‘Because George Peters finished up in a black plastic bag, that’s why. And if you ask me, you’re more bloody awkward than I am.’
She nodded. ‘We’ll see about that. Now tell me – why did you want to see the George Peters file again?’
I opened it. The withdrawal he’d signed was still there. Nothing had changed. I had become so dependent on my memory of George writing his statement, that the withdrawal had begun to seem unreal, a nightmare not yet dissolved. But it was real enough. I touched it. Yes...real.
I sighed.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I was hoping I’d imagined this.’
‘It’s definite enough.’
‘If it’d only been in ball-point, I might have accepted it more easily.’
She was smiling at me, nodding. ‘Why?’
‘I might well have been carrying a spare ball-point.’
‘But it’s definitely in ink.’ She had her head tilted, considering me carefully. ‘What’s the matter?’
A stress pain had shot into my head, behind my eyes, almost blinding me. I sat still, waiting. Gradually, it subsided.
‘Are you all right?’ She was looking at me anxiously.
‘Yes, it’s gone now.’ I smiled. She shook her head. But a thought had sprung forward, waiting to be claimed, and I’d lost it.
She put a forefinger on the withdrawal. ‘You can’t argue against fact, Cliff.’
The residue of the pain reminded me I’d nearly trapped an important thought. I felt irritated. The anger streamed from me.
‘But I remember Peters writing a statement. I saw that. It’s how I remember things, in pictures. I can’t remember names. Sometimes I can’t remember people, until I can get a mental image of when I saw them before, and put ‘em in a setting. It’s how I am. And I remember that. He was left-handed, and he was cursing the oblique nib, because it’s right-handed, but in fact...’ I slapped the withdrawal note angrily. ‘...this fact, he used another pen to write this with, and I don’t remember any of that.’
‘Easy,’ she said. ‘Easy now, Cliff.’
‘And I promised Tessa Clayton something, but I can’t remember that, either. And if there’s something I am sure about, it’s that I don’t make promises unless I can keep them. So why would I forget that?’
‘Perhaps you didn’t get time to keep your promise, so you don’t have to get yourself all worked up.’
‘And I can’t locate my driving licence and the car’s registration.’
‘They’ll turn up.’
‘And why had you got my wallet? Why wasn’t it in my pocket? What was it doing in the briefcase?’
‘Now stop it!’ she said. She stood over me, forcing me to look up at her. ‘That’s enough. There are reasons. Don’t get yourself in a tizz.’
‘What reasons?’
‘We’ll find them. Don’t worry, Cliff, we’ll find them.’
‘But I always carry my wallet in my inside jacket pocket.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘But it was in the briefcase.’
‘All right. So it was.’
‘I was wearing my green Harris tweed jacket.’
I stopped. There had been a sudden picture of me, here in this office, shrugging into that jacket, reaching for my anorak and the briefcase with the George Peters file in it. But where was that jacket? I hadn’t seen it since.
‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was.’
‘If you say so, Cliff. So that’s where your driving licence and the car registration papers are, in your green jacket.’
I looked at her in desperation. ‘But I haven’t got a green Harris tweed jacket.’ Then I had to put my head down and grab it with both hands in case it burst wide open.
Nicola was shaking my shoulder. ‘Cliff, Cliff!’
I raised my head. Her face swam, contorted. ‘And Nicola,’ I said, ‘I did take that money.’
‘But not as a bribe. You didn’t know.’
‘I did know. I’ve remembered. I can see it now, Tessa Clayton with the envelope in her hand, showing it to me, and I knew what it was, and what was in it.’
She couldn’t say anything, only grip my shoulders and stare at me with her eyes dark with worry. The only comfort would be for her to tell me that what I remembered was false. But she knew I couldn’t face that.
‘You’d better go home,’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘No. Give me a minute and I can manage.’
‘All the same...’
‘I can manage.’
&n
bsp; ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I feel like giving you a right thump on the nose. And don’t think I couldn’t.’
I tried to grin at her. Certainly I managed to get to my feet and stand steadily. ‘I really am all right. It passes. Maybe I’m a bit crazy, but that seems to be a qualification of car drivers these days. Come on, I’ll show you.’
‘Do you think I dropped in here just to catch you snooping. I wanted to use the phone. Hold on.’
The telephonist always left the Inspector’s phone plugged through to the exchange. She began dialling, and got her number. Vaguely I heard her telling somebody called Marsha she’d been delayed. She replaced the phone. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I came to this building that night, as you have now. When we talked about it, there didn’t seem to have been a reason. There’d be no point in dropping in here just to leave my briefcase, and the money – which I’m sure I’d got but I still don’t know why – that wouldn’t have brought me here. But now I see. I came here to use the phone. I was going to ring somebody...but who? And why? Oh hell, Nicola, it’s even worse when I half remember.’
‘But you’re sure of this?’
‘What other reason could there have been, except to phone?’
I’ll use the phone in the office.
‘Now what?’ she demanded.
It had been almost as though I’d heard my own voice in my head. I had said those words. I’ll use the phone in the office. I shook my head, clearing it, leaving only a hum like a disconnected line.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I came here to use the phone.’
I was aware she was eyeing me with concern. ‘Where did you leave your car?’
‘By the park.’
She put off the lights and locked up, then walked me to my car. Very nearly, I felt, she put her hand to my arm to steady me. I felt old and uncertain as I got behind the wheel, but I did the correct actions in the right order.
‘You see, I’m quite capable.’
‘Keep in touch,’ she told me. ‘That’s an order.’
‘Yes ma’am.’ I gestured, and drove away.
The trouble with my aunt’s place was that there was only on-street parking. The street, one of the main ones out of town towards the west, was lined with solid and pretentious Victorian semis, built at a time when car parking had not been an issue. I left the car on the road, under a streetlamp.
Aunt Peg, not sure if I’d be back or when, had a stew going. I knew before I reached the front door. She glanced at me as I walked in, but that’s all she ever needs.
‘I knew it would upset you.’
‘It’s all right. Stew, is it?’
‘On the table in two minutes.’
‘I’ll just wash my hands.’
I ran up the stairs to my room, straight to the narrow wardrobe she called a tallboy. Inside was my one decent suit, two pairs of jeans and a pair of slacks, a brown sports jacket, a blazer short of two buttons, and my mac. I was wearing the anorak over the grey jacket of an otherwise defunct suit and a pair of baggy woollen trousers. There was no green Harris tweed jacket.
When I went down again I remembered to kiss her on the cheek. She nodded, having noted the omission. The piled plate was placed in front of me, and she sat opposite before commenting.
‘In a fair rush, weren’t you?’
‘Something I wanted to check. Had to.’
‘Hmm!’ She stared at her plate. ‘Too salty, do you think?’ I was expected to contradict. ‘Not a bit. It’s marvellous.’
‘I could tell you every item in that tallboy.’
‘You listened for the door! You crafty old auntie. I was looking for a green Harris tweed jacket.’
‘There isn’t one. I could’ve saved you the trouble.’
‘But there was one, wasn’t there? Before the incident.’ Between us, my battering was ‘the incident’. It made an attack with a heavy spanner sound more genteel.
For a few moments she chewed placidly, head to one side as she thought about it. Then: ‘I did wonder what had happened to that. Certainly you had it, but it wasn’t in the parcel that nice sergeant brought from the hospital. I didn’t want to worry you about it.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘And that’s a lie, to start with.’
I smiled as well as I could with a mouthful of beef. ‘Not worried about the jacket. But one or two things are missing, and they might have been in the pockets.’
She placed knife and fork on the plate and sat back, her serious ‘I’m listening’ attitude.
‘Don’t let it get cold,’ I said.
‘What things?’
‘At the moment – all that’s obvious – it’s the registration form for the Volvo, and my driving licence.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘then I think I know...’
‘For heaven’s sake, auntie, eat your dinner. It’ll do after.’
As well try to stop a charging rhino. Dabbing her lips with a napkin, she went over to her old Welsh dresser, opened a drawer, and came back with an envelope.
‘I’ve always kept these for you, but you wouldn’t have carried them around with you, I’m sure.’
I emptied them out beside my plate. The Volvo’s registration, my birth certificate, blood donor’s card, and my copy of the decree absolute. No driver’s licence. I would have been carrying that.
Gradually, the detritus of my former life was coming together. But I was not getting anything like a clear picture of how the missing bits fitted into the outline.
Clearly, with the meal finished, the washing-up done and the wiping by me, it was expected that I’d settle down in my uncle’s easy chair and doze in front of the TV set. Aunt Peg’s meals were always huge, her husband having been a steel erector, a large man with a mountainous appetite. I felt I didn’t dare to doze. I had an address that needed chasing up.
‘You’re not going out again?’
‘It could be urgent.’
‘You’re tired. Sit down and rest.’
But my mind wasn’t going to sit and rest. ‘I wouldn’t be able to relax. Don’t worry. It’s nothing strenuous.’
She sighed, and slapped the arms of her chair. ‘Just like your father. No sense or reason in what he ever did.’
‘He married your sister, didn’t he?’
‘That’s what I meant.’ Her lips puckered. ‘He should have married me.’
For a moment I gazed into one of life’s tragedies, and then it was gone. I touched the back of her hand. ‘Heaven forbid. You’re bossy enough as an aunt, heaven knows what you’d be like as my mother.’
‘Get away with you,’ she said, so I went away.
It wasn’t likely that Sergeant Porter would be on duty, but I tried the station. He wasn’t. The duty officer asked whether he could help.
‘Not really. It’s a friendly chat I want.’
He eyed me with uncertainty, then made up his mind. ‘Eight o’clock onwards, he’d maybe be in the Duke of York or the Mitre. Don’t tell him I said so.’
‘Thanks. I won’t.’
It was eight-twenty when I located him at the bar in the Mitre, laughing with a group of his mates. I ordered my statutory half and waited until he chose to join me at one end of the bar. It took ten minutes.
‘Cliff? No good offering...’
‘I’m fixed, thanks. Any news?’
‘The date of death’s vague. Any time from a year to eighteen months ago.’
‘Sixteen,’ I corrected. ‘I spoke to him on November the 16th.’
‘So you did.’ He lifted his glass and stared into it. ‘At his place in Rock Street.’
‘Why d’you say it like that?’ I asked.
He lifted one eyebrow. ‘Your account was vague. No. Wrong word. Contradictory.’
‘Damn it, Bill. You know about my memory.’
‘But certainly he signed something on that day.’
‘By “something” you mean that withdrawal form?’
&nbs
p; ‘So it’s a fair assumption he was alive then.’
Our conversation was in the form of light banter, but I detected a coolness about him. For a moment I hesitated. Then I plunged.
‘Why’re you taking that tone with me, Bill?’
‘You’re asking too many questions.’
‘Then answer that last one.’
‘I have. You’re showing too much interest in this.’
‘It was my car...’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then will you believe...I want to find out what happened that day. I’ve got to find out. Bits of memory...they’re just confusing the issue. To me it’s important, Bill.’
‘He might not have died that day. Or do you know he did?’
‘Not him,’ I said. ‘He’s your affair. It’s me I’m worried about. I’m no longer certain about my mental balance.’
I hadn’t wanted to say that; it wasn’t what I’d hunted him out for. But for some reason I thought I could trust him. He drank beer, licked his lips, looked round for the barmaid.
‘It’s not your brain I’m worried about, sport,’ he said. ‘It’s the rest of you. We’re moving into a new aspect of it, and it could be unhealthy.’
‘I’m only trying...’
‘They found something else on that arm of his, which is pretty well all they’ve got to work on. Tracks. D’you know what they are, Cliff?’
‘An idea. You’re saying he was on drugs?’
‘You’re not surprised?’
‘Clayton told me he suspected that.’
He banged the glass down on the bar with more emotion than I’d ever seen him use. It attracted the barmaid, frowning.
‘Fill it,’ he said, not glancing at her. He put his face close to mine. ‘And you’re still sniffing around!’
‘I don’t think the drug aspect’s relevant. Look Bill, I came here to ask you something, and you won’t let me say it.’
‘Not relevant!’ He raised his eyes, grunted in disgust, and said: ‘Ask away.’
‘That night. In the office car park. Were you there?’
‘One of the first. I was on duty.’
‘Got there before they took me away?’
‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you how you were lying face down on the doorstep?’
‘When they took me away – ambulance, I suppose – did you notice what I was wearing?’
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