Stone Cold Dead

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘She was seen, Ray. By Gerald.’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t matter. I made the delivery, stayed a minute or two, then went back to Clare. She said she’d made up her mind, and she wasn’t going on with it.’

  ‘What did she mean by that—not going on with it?’

  ‘I didn’t understand at first.’ He rubbed a palm over his face, as though to provoke deeper thought on it. ‘It was just that Pierce had really got under her skin. He’d know that Clare and I had been the ones who’d collected Dennis. Well...Mrs Lloyd would say—wouldn’t she! And then, said Clare, he’d be after her. And this was the Clare who’d told Helen to stick a knife in him! At that time, Clare would’ve been able to do it herself. But now...hell, she was going to pieces. I tried to talk her round. No, she said. I just didn’t know what to do. Time was running on—the party, or rather, the dinner first. About due. And she started to say she was going to have done with it.’

  ‘Have done with it?’ Amelia asked. ‘In what way?’

  He sighed, lifting his shoulders with it. ‘She said, quite simply, that she was going to phone Pierce at the Blue Boar—and tell him where Dennis and Helen were. Then she’d be able to get some sleep, she said. I don’t know what she meant.’ He shook his head miserably. ‘I mean—it wouldn’t just have ruined everything, it meant he’d be getting his filthy hands on Helen again.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘I tried. Really, Mr Patton, I tried to get her to see sense. But no. She was going back to her car and use her car phone to tell Pierce. Leave a message if he wasn’t there. You know. I pleaded with her. Pleaded. But no. She turned away and I grabbed her arm—and suddenly she was her old self. Well...sort of. Snarling and vicious. “Touch me…” she said, threatening, and in a second she’d got her peg out.’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘The ladies carry a smaller baton than ours. Call ’em pegs.’

  ‘Oh?’ They hadn’t in my days. ‘And she threatened you with it?’

  ‘More than that. Got me on the arm. Left arm. It’s still bruised. And—naturally—by instinct I suppose, I had my own baton out—and she’d turned away as I struck out.’

  He sounded very weary. His shrug barely moved his shoulders. ‘I’d killed her, Richard. These caps are no protection at all. She just went down, and I’d killed her.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. She was only unconscious.’

  ‘It’s not so!’ He sounded frantic. ‘I tried. Tried for her pulse. Wrist and neck. I couldn’t feel a thing. Dead—and...oh, I don’t know. I had to get to that dinner and the party. My head was going round—all the working out, and Helen, and Dennis. So...so that she wouldn’t be found, I pushed her into the pound. And that’s that.’ He ended on a note of despair. Then he looked haggardly from one face to the other, but we were both silent. Amelia had my hand firmly grasped in hers.

  ‘But Ray,’ I said, ‘you’d killed her to prevent her from phoning Pierce, then you went and phoned him yourself. Why?’

  ‘Well...’ He looked round, then found the words. ‘I thought about it, you see, and decided it might not be such a bad idea, phoning Pierce, but with a different end in mind. A better idea than Clare’s.’

  ‘And what was that?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘It would bring him there, you see, along the tow-path, and at some time after eleven, when the pub shut.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well...I’d be waiting for him, wouldn’t I! A quick tap on the head, and then drown him. If it meant holding him under. Don’t you see, it was the only thing to do—kill him. Because I didn’t know about Colin’s plans for Helen and Denny, and all I could see was Helen and the lad back in that lousy dump of a house, and the violence going on and on, and I couldn’t have done anything legal about it, because it was domestic. You know damn well that the police can’t interfere in domestics. Till it gets criminal, till somebody dies—Helen or Denny, or both. All I could do was kill him. Then it’d all be over. I’d be doing somebody some good, anyway.’ His voice fell away to a whisper. ‘And by God how I hated him! And it seemed to me I was on my own with it—the responsibility all mine—and I wanted an end to it. Oh Lord...a positive end.’

  ‘So you phoned him, with that in mind. Good. But you didn’t carry it through, did you? Why didn’t you go ahead with it? Did you simply decide that Helen wasn’t worth the trouble?’

  ‘No, no! It wasn’t that.’ He gave Amelia a sudden, almost delightful smile of embarrassment, flicked a glance at me.

  ‘We’d just got engaged, you see,’ he went on after a slight pause. ‘Mellie and me. And...well...I was staying the night. You know this, Richard, and Mellie knew which room I was in...and she came to me. To kiss me good-night, she said. Quietly, in the night. I knew Pierce wouldn’t leave the pub until after eleven, so I thought I didn’t have to worry about time. But Mellie came. And she was warm...you know. And—well, she didn’t go back to her own room until about six. I mean…I couldn’t unwrap her from round me, couldn’t say, “Excuse me, love, but I’ve got to go out and kill somebody.” Now...could I? I was stuck. It was dawn before she decided she ought to get back to her own room.’

  His voice had sunk lower and lower. It was a secret. I could wish it had been said louder, so that Mellie might have heard. But she wasn’t at the swing doors now. To her, Ray had been the one to phone Pierce, and launch a vicious attack on Helen. Yet she’d been a little to blame, herself.

  ‘Well Ray,’ I said, after a few moments to think it through, ‘it seems to me that you’ve got two explanations to make, here. Or rather, one confession and one explanation. The confession to Inspector Slater, to explain how Clare died, and the explanation to Mellie, to explain the phone call and why you didn’t go through with it.’

  I waited for his reaction, but he stared at me blankly. Disaster faced him from both directions—and he was lost.

  ‘What say,’ I suggested to him, ‘that you and I go to find Inspector Slater. Right now. And Amelia can go to see Mellie, and explain about the phone call, and why you didn’t carry it through. What d’you say to that?’

  But it was Amelia I was asking, not Ray. He had no choice. She raised her eyebrows at me and tried to smile. But gently she nodded her head. It was going to be difficult to persuade Mellie that she need not blame herself too severely for what had happened to Helen. But I knew Amelia could do it.

  And soon, it now seemed, Helen would be living at Flight House herself, and would be able to offer her own forgiveness.

  If you enjoyed Stone Cold Dead you might be interested in A Death to Remember by Roger Ormerod, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from A Death to Remember by Roger Ormerod

  1

  I was sitting at a corner table in the lounge of the Winking Frog, nursing a half of bitter and wondering whether to eat there, when I suddenly remembered I’d had a car. What provoked this thought was the sight of a large, pallid man in boots, jeans and anorak standing in front of me with his pint glass almost lost in his fist, and who was saying: ‘Mind if I join you?’

  I couldn’t have put a name to him, but the sight of him had prompted the thought: what the hell happened to my car?

  ‘What the hell happened to my car?’ I asked angrily, the anger surprising me because I had nothing on which to base it, and no clear reason to aim it at him.

  He sat opposite me. His smile was apologetic. He half reached forward with his left hand in a gesture that I realised was intended as reassuring.

  ‘It’s in a corner of the servicing bay. Only wants the battery charging and the engine turning over...’ He stopped, tilting his head. His blond hair tumbled over one ear. ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ There was genuine anxiety in his voice.

  The mention of a servicing bay, and of turning over the engine, had provided the necessary information. The mental image was of a garage, and then of an office overlooking the yard at the back, and I had him. Clay...no, Clayton it’d been. Christian or surname? I hesit
ated, not sure whether I ought to be friendly or aggressive, not willing to commit myself.

  ‘Tony Clayton,’ he said, and I realised he was feeling as tentative as I was, though it had to be for a different reason. It was unlikely that he, too, suffered from a deficient memory. He would know where he stood in this world, his viewpoint firmly established, but I was still rebuilding mine. I needed any help I could get, but not from Tony Clayton.

  Other people – ones I could trust – had made sure I was not short of basic information. During the previous nine months, from the time it was decided that my mind would accept information and store it, my visitors had programmed facts into my brain in a steady stream. I knew who I was, why I’d been there in that convalescent home, what I had been before the assault (an Executive Officer in the Civil Service), and vaguely what I had been doing that day. A Welfare Officer had ex-plained that my decree absolute had gone through only four days before the incident. (Lucky, that, he’d explained. My coma might have affected the issue. He hadn’t fully explained why it was to be considered as lucky.) There had been no shortage of detail about my life and my work, but nobody had explained, or been able even to attempt to explain, what my emotional background to life had been. I didn’t know whether I’d been light-hearted or serious, introvert or extrovert, optimistic or pessimistic. I could no longer trust my emotional responses, so that there was no basis from which I could face life with any confidence. They hadn’t been able to restore my personality.

  Perhaps the psychiatrists had realised this. It would explain their reluctance to have me roaming loose in the harsh and unforgiving world. They hadn’t told me whether or not I should treat it as harsh and unforgiving, or look on it as a challenge, with hope leading the way and optimism guiding me.

  But amongst the facts I’d been fed had been the simple one that the person I had to blame for my present condition was a garage owner by the name of Tony Clayton. I stared at him, and felt nothing. He was uneasy and restless. His eyes would not hold mine. He glanced down at his glass.

  ‘I might need the car,’ I said in a neutral voice.

  He looked up eagerly. ‘I’ll tax it for you. But you’ll have to check on the insurance. You’ll have all the papers...’ He stopped, flustered. ‘But you don’t remember me, do you?’

  ‘I remember you.’

  What I remembered came as an abrupt, brilliant picture in my mind. In it, he was towering – seemed huge in my second of reconstruction – at his desk, with the window behind him. His face was in shadow. I could detect no expression, but his voice was loud and aggressive. ‘...be damned if I’ll let you take anything out of this office...’

  I smiled as the image died, and my amusement angered him again. But now his anger was tempered by time. His face, I realised, was thinner, and there was weariness and suffering behind his eyes. When he spoke he’d already controlled himself. His voice was no more than disgruntled.

  ‘I don’t see what’s funny.’

  ‘You were furious,’ I explained, taking his question seriously. ‘The way I remembered you.’

  ‘That’s funny?’

  ‘You said I wasn’t going to take anything out of your office. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done that, if you objected.’

  ‘But you bloody-well did.’

  ‘I took...what?’ I asked, keeping my eyes on his.

  ‘Wages book, bank statements, cheque stubs, petty-cash books...’

  My memory had blank spots about my previous work as a Social Security Inspector, but I was fairly clear on one point: books were not impounded unless something very serious had been discovered. I sat and stared at him. In the shadowed car park beside the Social Security office, this man had caught up with me and smashed in my head with a large adjustable spanner, apparently to recover his books. So the issue must have been serious. I could remember nothing of what the issue had been.

  ‘I’ll get you the other half,’ he said, gesturing towards my glass. Perhaps my eyes on him had made him nervous.

  ‘No. No, thanks. I’m not supposed to drink too much alcohol.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I get headaches.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked away. ‘I suppose you would.’

  We eyed each other cautiously. There seemed nothing more to say. He raised his hand from the table, then flapped it back. There was a hopelessness about the gesture. I thought he was about to leave, but he did not.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ I burst out. ‘What’s this all about? What do you want with me?’

  ‘I heard you were back in town.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been wondering when I’d be coming to hunt you out.’

  ‘I’ve only been back a week, myself.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From Winson Green.’

  ‘The prison?’

  ‘I got two years. Time off for good behaviour. Got out a week ago.’

  ‘Me too. Out a bit longer, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A month ago. From the convalescent home.’ Then I was laughing, though I wanted to cry, and couldn’t understand either emotion. All I knew was that we’d both lost fifteen months of our lives, and what I knew of the reason didn’t make sense.

  This time he could laugh with me, but only miserably. I stopped when I saw I was making him afraid. Afraid of me? But I felt nothing, no desire for retribution, no fury, no haunting cry for revenge within me.

  ‘So what is it you want?’ I asked.

  He moved his glass around on the table, looking down at it. And mumbled something.

  ‘I didn’t hear that.’

  He looked up defiantly. ‘I want you to come to the garage and go through my books.’

  ‘It’s not my job...’

  ‘As a favour.’

  ‘Didn’t you know? I’m retired on health grounds. I’m not in the Civil Service now. Not your local Social Security Inspector.’

  This I offered to him savagely. My job was just one of the things he’d taken from me, though not by any means as important as the loss of my memory. The job was a loss I’d become reconciled to, the resentment, if any, being directed against the Department, which had been just a little too anxious to see the back of me, I thought. I mean, they could have given me unpaid leave for a year – two years – then taken me back. All right, it could be argued that I would never be able to handle the work, but they hadn’t given me the chance to give it a try. The Welfare Officer had been persuasive. Perhaps he’d been more concerned with the welfare of the Department. My memory did at least supply the information that I had not always conformed to rules and regulations.

  So my response to Clayton was savage, though not directed at him. All the same, he flinched, but he persisted.

  ‘As a favour.’

  ‘A favour...to you? Lord – you must be crazy.’ I said this less aggressively. I was beginning to realise there had to be more behind it than his plain request. Curiosity held me.

  His smile faded, but he went on stubbornly, as though he’d rehearsed it all. ‘I’ve been out a week. I told you. My wife’s been running the place, and doing a good job of it, with a bit of a hand from the accountant. But...’ A shrug. His huge shoulders moved heavily. ‘But I don’t know. There’s something wrong.’

  ‘If you’ve got an accountant...’

  ‘All the same, if you’d just give them a look through. You must’ve had years of experience...’ He left it hanging, like a bait, and either he was very clever or he’d dropped by accident right on the words that captured me.

  Experience, yes. I’d been the local Inspector for the Department of Health and Social Security for eight solid years. Normally, in the Civil Service, you get moved around the different sections, broadening the experience, but I’d held on to the Inspector’s job. It got me out of the office, to meet new people and new situations. If you like the Inspector’s job, there’d be nobody itching to take it from you. Your average civil service is not keen to get out on his own, away from his ro
w of instruction books and his senior officers. So I’d been allowed to build up experience on the outside job. But that didn’t make me an accountant. I’d been interested in wages books, not company accounts; in contracts of service and industrial accidents, not profit and loss.

  But it had been experience, and one of the things I bitterly regretted was the waste, all of it gone for nothing. Now I was offered the chance to re-engage my interest, yet I was facing the rather frightening knowledge that I might have lost it all from my mind.

  ‘I’ve never had any training in accountacy,’ I said, trying to make it a definite rejection.

  He shrugged that away. ‘Come and have a look. It wouldn’t hurt you.’

  Was he offering me friendship, perhaps something more? A job as a wages clerk?

  I said: ‘Why not? Come on, then.’ I got to my feet. I had nothing better to do.

  He led me outside. He had no car, and for a moment I hesitated. His glance at me was speculative. ‘It’s only just down the road.’

  And yes, I had forgotten. Heavens, it was possible I’d had lunch at The Winking Frog that morning, before I went on to check his books, or whatever had taken me to his garage premises, Pool Street Motors. Ah, you see, let the subconscious do it, and the name came to me easily and smoothly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember now.’

  Remembered driving down Pool Street from the pub in my Volvo, past the flower pot factory that was the cause of Pool Street. Or at least, was the cause of its name. More recently they’d switched to plastic pots, but I could remember the days when the kilns spread their special tangy fumes along this street, could remember it because it was way back, twenty years before the assault. Go back far enough, and everything was quite clear in my mind. The pool was where they’d taken their clay, and it was still there, nobody having troubled to fill it in. Pool Street Motors backed on to the pool. It was possible they shoved their useless old wrecks in there.