A Death to Remember

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘You’re saying she conned me? A funny word to use.’ Strange, anyway, considering we were talking about his wife.

  He poured the tea. ‘Persuaded, if you like. With pressure. Help yourself to milk.’

  ‘Well yes. I’m not remembering that day – the day of the promise – too well. But I get the distinct impression of her desperation, on behalf of George. You understand, Tony? Drugs he’d lost or something. The people involved wouldn’t be prepared to wait.’

  ‘Drugs!’ he said, sipping his tea cautiously. ‘What’re we talking about here? Do you know about drugs? I don’t. But...seems to me...six hundred quid ain’t much to go desperate about.’

  ‘Possibly not.’

  ‘Which was what it was.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  I didn’t know where he was leading, but I had to allow him to lead. I stirred sugar in, round and round with the spoon. Waiting.

  ‘So you promised,’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s just possible that I promised something.’

  ‘More than possible. I heard you doing it. Promising.’

  I gave a sigh. One memory confirmed. ‘She gave me a phone number.’ Then I registered what he’d said. ‘You heard us? When did you hear us, and where?’

  He smiled. ‘Thought that’d liven you up. You and Tessa, you were down in the foreman’s office. That’s the little place in the corner...’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘She’d got you down there...oh, don’t worry, I knew what game she was up to. It wasn’t any big deal, with George in danger from the mob. Don’t make fancy stories out of it. She’d been slipping money to him, and I knew it. The same old thing – to feed his habit. That’s all. How far d’you think six hundred would go? Ever tried to buying horse on the market? Horse...that’s heroin.’

  I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Clayton was rationalising the memory away.

  ‘So I knew what she was up to,’ he said, ‘and I was right fed up with it. Profits drifting away...and George was as good as dead already. Have you thought of that? When they get to that stage, six hundred a week...hell, they’re not going to last long. Either an overdose, or degeneration and something like flu’, that they can’t fight against. I hated it, Cliff.’ He looked down at the table. I was Cliff again. I’d been brought there to support him in his self-recrimination. ‘Hated it, and didn’t know where to turn. For him and for her. But I wasn’t going to sit back and just let it happen. Oh no. Not let that stupid bugger kill himself...’

  His voice broke. He was silent. But surely...my memory of George Peters, as I’d seen him that same morning, was not of a person on the edge of dissolution, not a young man broken by drugs. But I couldn’t trust my memory. Could I? What had I seen and done that day? My hand shook as I picked up my cup.

  ‘But she gave me a phone number,’ I said gently. ‘A phone box, it turned out to be.’

  ‘Of course she did,’ he snapped, turning on me. Then he gave a weak grin; he’d been reprimanding me for being slow. ‘What did she get you thinking – that you were getting involved with the Mafia? Sordid meetings arranged by secret phone messages! Load of rubbish, friend. That phone box was how she always got in touch with him. Same time every evening. Reckon he couldn’t afford the change to phone the garage, not with all that gunge he shot into his arm. So she gave you a number! Oh...great.’

  Maybe I’d romanticised my memories, but not to such an extent that it merited his angry contempt. ‘But she did give it to me!’

  ‘I said, didn’t I! Agreed. She gave it to you. One phone number.’

  ‘And I remembered it. Digit for digit.’

  ‘Good for you. So what?’

  ‘It proves my memory’s all right.’

  ‘Does it have to be proved?’

  I looked away from him. He was calmly, scornfully, eroding my images of recall. But they were all I had of that day.

  ‘But I made her a promise,’ I said carefully.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘I made a promise. You agreed.’

  He stared at me in surprise at my concern. I was talking to a motor engineer, whose life consisted of promises idly given and casually broken. Then he gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh mate, your face!’

  ‘I said I’d ring from the office. Said that to Tessa.’

  It was another of my cherished memories. I’ll phone from the office. I’d heard my own voice clearly. Was he about to destroy that, too?

  ‘What did you promise, sport?’ he asked, abruptly serious.

  ‘That I’d phone from the office.’

  ‘Well then...’ A grin. ‘There you go, then.’ He thumped me on the shoulder. ‘So you kept it.’

  ‘How the hell could I have done? I didn’t reach the office.’

  ‘Not that office. Our office!’ he shouted into my ear. ‘Our bloody office, upstairs. That’s where you phoned from. I remember it. I’d better phone in, you said. Here, have some more tea.’

  And so I had. I’d phoned in to see whether we had a file on Pool Street Motors. I’d spoken to Maureen. I watched the tea going into my cup. I didn’t hear it being poured, nor smell it. I was staring at the whirlpool that was my mind. How could I have remembered it as a promise? How could Tessa even have taken such a statement as a promise, particularly if I’d afterwards simply done it? Yet she’d accused me of failing to keep my promise.

  ‘She was afraid,’ I said, myself afraid to say it in case he had something with which to destroy that.

  He swung himself to his feet. ‘Something to eat? I’m starving.’

  ‘No thanks. Not for me. Didn’t you hear what I said?’

  ‘I heard you.’ His head was in the fridge. ‘You said she was afraid.’ He straightened, a box of eggs balanced on his palm. ‘Of you?’

  ‘I got that impression. But she spoke about somebody waiting for her at George’s place in Rock Street. She said that that was the person she was afraid of.’

  ‘And you believed her?’ He hadn’t moved, standing stiff, fridge door open, palm flat with the eggs on it. ‘You believed she was afraid of somebody at George’s place?’

  ‘Yes,’ I had to swallow.

  ‘But all the same, you left her?’

  ‘I didn’t think...’

  Then he moved at last, taking the eggs to the sink unit, swinging the fridge door shut with his foot. He was breaking eggs into a basin before he realised I hadn’t gone on.

  ‘No, you didn’t think,’ he agreed.

  ‘I didn’t think she was quite balanced.’

  ‘So you bloody-well ran away.’ He said it away from me, at the window.

  ‘She’d got that shotgun.’

  ‘You can’t really have believed she’d have used it.’

  ‘That was the idea she gave me.’

  He made a sound of disgust, then he was beating the eggs, like a mechanical toy, his eyes wet, his mouth loose.

  I had to look away. The tea was nearly cold. I cupped it with both palms, and devoted myself to it. After a while he’d beaten them into a froth and I heard him tip them into a saucepan. I looked up, watching his bowed shoulders. I had to try for something I could seize and hold on to.

  ‘But all the same, I did have the phone number, and she did slip me the envelope of money in the wages book, to take away. She intended me to contact George...’

  ‘No,’ he said softly.

  ‘No...what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘No – she didn’t slip you the money in the envelope.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tony.’

  He was niggling at the eggs with the fork as they cooked, twisting his head to watch me. ‘She didn’t give you that envelope with the six hundred quid in it.’

  ‘But I remember that. Clearly. You might not have seen. I mean, she wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been looking away at the time. So how could you know? Come on, Tony, stop buggering about.’

  He showed his teeth in what he might have meant for a grin. ‘I heard you,
didn’t I! I told you that. Heard you promise...’

  ‘So I did...’ I cut in eagerly.

  ‘Agreed. Put it like that. So I nipped back up to the office smartly, ‘cause then I knew it had to be somewhere, and there it was in the desk drawer, six hundred in an envelope. And how do I know she didn’t slip it to you? Because I slid it into my inside pocket and said nothing.’ He slopped out two helpings of scrambled egg on to two plates, clattered in a drawer for two forks, and brought it all back to the table. He banged one plate under my nose. ‘Get it down you. You look like you need it.’

  I wasn’t feeling well, and it must have shown. That memory was still clear, Tessa slipping the envelope into the wages book. I could see it. I could recall it to my mind’s eye that very second. Tony’s revenge, this had to be, I told myself. He blamed me for his wife’s death, and this was my just reward. He was intent on driving me insane. I had to fight back.

  ‘I know she did it.’

  ‘She didn’t.’ He stirred the soggy mess on his plate, tried it, sprinkled on salt and pepper. ‘I had the money in my pocket.’

  ‘But I took the books with me, including the wages records.’

  ‘So you did. Must have gone insane, ‘cause there was no point.’

  The scrambled egg wasn’t bad. I managed to swallow, and nearly choked. ‘I was not insane,’ I whispered. ‘And I know my job. Knew it. There was talk...somebody said...that I’d demanded the wages book, to take away.’

  ‘Tessa said that.’ His mouth was moving. He had no difficulty in swallowing. His eyes were on me, mocking. ‘But as you said, she might not have been rational. Is that the word?’

  ‘Yes. Rational.’

  ‘Or was it you – not rational?’

  I felt light-headed, but struggled against it. ‘If I said it, I’d have a reason. I must have done a job on the books, and spotted something...’

  ‘Depends what you mean by: a job.’

  ‘Examined them.’

  ‘You never even looked at them. Didn’t ask for them, and when I offered – stuck ‘em under your nose – you didn’t even open one book.’

  He was like a vicious infighter, aware he had his man floundering and going in for the kill. I saw only one dim but possible avenue for escape, and pressed for it, keeping my eyes on the plate and the fork, using them to concentrate all my remaining senses.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done such a thing. I’d examine them in your office, and only take ‘em away if they were complicated.’

  ‘You’re not calling me a liar?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Someone’s lying,’ I said to my plate. ‘You say you had the money in your pocket, and I took the books.’

  ‘Seems like that.’

  ‘Just the books? Nothing else to take?’

  ‘Nothing...no, I tell a lie. Gotta be accurate, ain’t we! There was your bleedin’ statements. You took them. Not that they were any use to you. Nobody would sign ‘em.’

  My fork went screek-screek on the plate as I forced that thought into the background. I gave it two seconds, then I looked up, right into his eyes.

  ‘Then if I didn’t take any money, why the hell did you follow me to the office, where, incidentally, I wouldn’t have gone unless I was going to make some sort of phone call. Who else could that have been but George, about the money? Tell me that, Tony.’

  His eyebrows shot up. His hands flew up in a gesture of astonishment. ‘Well of course! Why else would I follow you, except for the keys? You’d left your car. Remember? It wouldn’t start. But you took the keys.’

  ‘You followed me to the office for that? Some garage owner! Never heard of such wonderful service in my life!’

  ‘Ah yes. But we’d got to keep you happy, hadn’t we! There you were, all soddin’ afternoon, playing old Harry with the three lads in there...you’d have thought we’d busted every law in the land. And threatenin’ to come back next day. Gotta keep you sweet, old son. So I chased after you for the keys, and there you were, flat out on the doorstep. Well...’

  I stared at him. He’d destroyed all my precious items of recall, picked them off, one by one, and ended by describing somebody I knew I could not have been. Gradually his face blurred as my personality, as I thought I knew it, became smeared by his implications.

  ‘Finish your eggs, sport,’ he said.

  15

  I had to cling to something, and seized on one thought, my only support, shouting it at myself over and over until the mists cleared. It was my one solid, undisputable fact.

  The keys were in the car.

  But I treasured the thought to myself. Or rather, I tried to convince myself that I was treasuring it, to throw at him later and disconcert him. But I knew the truth was more simple: I was afraid that this, too, could in some way be taken from me.

  He said: ‘Aren’t you going to eat that?’

  For a second his words didn’t register. Then I managed to nod, and applied myself to it, forcing it down, cold now.

  It didn’t seem he was going to start on the mountain of washing-up in front of him, but at least he was starting on the job of getting it together. I sat at the table, aware of his movement behind me.

  ‘What were you doing, up this way?’ he asked. ‘Not coming to see me, surely?’

  ‘No. Didn’t know you lived here. It was Charlie Graham I wanted to see.’

  ‘Ha!’ When he laughed there was a note of contempt in it. ‘Him! A lot of chance you’ll get.’

  ‘Can try.’

  ‘Reckon he’s upped and offed by now. There’s been all the signs. I get to hear, you know, and his dad’s a mate of mine. That’s his place, there.’

  I turned. He was pointing an empty sauce bottle down the long, narrow garden. It had been totally neglected, flower plots now distinguishable only by the more luxuriant growth of their weeds, fruit trees at the far end old and gnarled and unpruned.

  ‘We’re back to back,’ he explained.

  ‘Yes...’ I said in realisation. ‘That’d explain how he and George were friends.’

  ‘Friends! Charlie tagged on. George was the little ‘un, but he’d got the brains. Till he addled ‘em with that filth. Couldn’t call ‘em real friends, though.’

  I got up and stared through the window. It was another old house, looking even more decrepit than Clayton’s.

  ‘What did you get to hear?’ I asked.

  ‘When somebody’s going round calling in old debts and borrowing anything that’s going – when he wants money from his dad when there’s nothing but the house left...in my book, it means he’s lining up for a quick getaway.’

  I looked sideways at him. His voice had sounded casual, but he was telling me something. ‘From the police, you mean?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘He’s not involved, surely?’

  ‘Maybe it’s you he’s scared of.’

  ‘Me! Good Lord!’

  I thought about that. If Graham had already gone – whether from me or not – I was left with nobody. There was so little to be salvaged of my precious memory that Graham was becoming important in my life. Suddenly, the loss of him became of critical importance. Almost, I felt panic in case he’d already left.

  ‘What about the other two?’ I asked. ‘There were three men in your repair bay, the day I called.’

  ‘Long gone. Geoff Tranter...somewhere up north. Arthur Pitt...you’ll never get to him. He fell out of a window and broke his neck. LSD, I suppose. It wasn’t any great loss.’

  ‘I’d better go and see,’ I said quickly. ‘About Graham. If you don’t mind...I mean, if the lift back to town’s still on.’

  ‘Sure it’s still on. You go ahead. You can get through down the garden, if that gate still opens. See it?’ He pointed. ‘I’ll amuse myself with this mess, till you get back.’

  He’d struck a facetious vein. I simply glanced at him, and followed his directions. The narrow path down to the gate was overgrown, and lashed my thighs. The gate itself creaked open, and the bottom
hinge broke off, having been rusted solid. The other side of the gate was exactly the opposite, a patch of near-bare earth with a chicken pen, a pigeon loft, and two kennels scattered around. A stripped-down motorcycle leaned against the boundary wall. I picked my way through the pecking hens, and two ducks that wanted to be friendly followed me to the back door.

  The tall, thin woman was in her fifties, and looked beaten to a point where she made no more concessions to pretence. She leaned against the door jamb, making only a token gesture as the two ducks pushed their way past her legs.

  ‘How in God’s name did you get here?’ she asked. ‘The gate’s on the latch.’

  I pointed. ‘From Mr Clayton’s.’

  ‘Y’ didn’t leave that gate...’

  ‘No ma’am, and I’ll wedge it when I leave.’

  ‘Well...I ain’t buyin’ nothin’ at the door, so you can leave right now.’

  ‘It was Charlie I was looking for.’

  She threw her head back. ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Ha-bloody-ha! He’s away and gone, mister. Took his hook. Scarpered.’

  ‘Pity. I just wanted a few words. And when did this...’

  ‘’Safternoon. A bit earlier and you’d have got him. Now ain’t that a pity! Got a warrant, have you?’

  ‘I’m not police.’

  ‘They’ll get him. Mark my words, some day they’ll get him, and serve the bugger right. It’s what he wants, a bit of discipline. That lazy sod back there...’ A toss of her head, indicating the house ‘...useless. Just no use to man nor beast, I can tell you...’

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  ‘You might just catch him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The bus station. It’ll be that, sure to be. Bus to anywhere. So long as he never comes back here.’

  If I’d been wearing a hat I’d have raised it. I turned away, making thank-you gestures. She watched me leave, nodding.

  ‘And make sure you shut that soddin’ gate.’ I waved to indicate I would.

  Tony Clayton watched me into the kitchen. ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s gone. If it hadn’t been...’ No use in ifs, though. ‘Can you give me that lift?’