Jamie was a fighter. A scrapper. Never down for long and always ready to come back for more. He’d been devoted to a game – any game – however silly or serious. He was a good loser and a gracious winner, but it was in the taking part that Jamie had really excelled. He gave his all to everything he did – even if he wasn’t much good at it. Jamie tried. They’d spent years driving him to football and then driving him home, muddy and happy and shouting in the car with his ruddy-faced friends – always the same, win or lose. And that time when he was twelve and he’d missed the false-start whistle at the county gala and swum a whole length alone. He’d touched the side and looked across the empty lanes in amazement that he’d won by so far . . .
Everybody had laughed at him.
Hundreds of people, with the sound bouncing off the walls of the watery venue in waves. But when Jamie had started to laugh too, they’d cheered – and clapped him as he’d walked all the way back to the blocks – and then cheered him again when he’d finished a tired last. Felix’s hands had been sore for two days from clapping so hard, and Margaret was so proud she had cried.
He smiled again now at the memory. Jamie’s life hadn’t been long, but while it had lasted, my God, it had been wonderful.
Wonderful.
Felix stared at the blurred chessmen.
What an ungrateful old bastard he was! Nineteen years of love and happiness, and two of Hell. What a terrible injustice he did to Jamie, to think of him now only with pain and bitter sorrow, when he’d achieved so much wonder to remember him by.
Felix wiped his eyes and touched the pawn again.
All these years the chessmen had been waiting for him.
He was so glad he’d come looking for them now.
Old Greybeard
‘Calvin, you said you knew the old lady at the funeral?’
Calvin looked up from the Exiteer database. It was taking for ever and driving him mad. ‘Don’t really know her, ma’am.’
‘But you know where to find her?’
He did. So he headed to Ladbrokes in a rare official capacity.
It was the hottest day of the year so far and Calvin rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie as he climbed the High Street. He nodded curtly at Shifty on the step and went inside.
The shop had no air con, relying on its deep interior to provide a cooling gloom, but the sun was at just the right angle today to make it an oven instead. Dennis Matthews was spreadeagled across two seats at the front of the shop so the air could find his armpits, while Sylvie had loosened her scarf and her chins just a notch in deference to the heat. Old Greybeard, however, was bundled up in her anorak and wellies, as always. Calvin could almost feel his core temperature rising just looking at her.
He went over and stood near her.
She was writing out a bet with a careful hand.
‘Can I sit?’
Her nod was almost imperceptible. He waited for a little while, watching the horses and the dogs on the screens.
‘How did you know Albert Cann?’
She didn’t pause in her work. ‘Friend of the family.’
‘Yes? For how long?’
Old Greybeard scratched out one of the runners. Wrote in another one.
‘A while.’
It was possible, he supposed. Nonetheless, Calvin felt uncomfortable. It was plain Old Greybeard didn’t want to talk to him about it, and without a formal interview he had very tenuous grounds on which to press her.
But they needed a break in the case . . .
‘What did you say to Reggie afterwards?’
She shrugged. ‘Condolences.’
Calvin blinked in surprise. Old Greybeard was lying. To him. To the police. He was astonished. And a little bit amused. But mostly just astonished.
Old Greybeard picked up her betting slip and studied it as if it were the Rosetta Stone. It certainly had enough writing on it but Calvin could see that the total stake was only 50p – the ticket minimum. Any less than that and they wouldn’t even ring it through the till.
He chose his next words carefully. ‘I thought the vicar was a bit harsh.’
‘Idiot!’ she muttered with unexpected anger. ‘He din’t know Albert. All his life people let him down.’
Calvin sat up straighter with interest. ‘Who let him down?’
Old Greybeard looked away and shrugged one mottled hand. ‘I were only trying to put things right.’
Calvin was on high alert now. She knew something. Maybe a lot. She might be the key to the whole case.
‘How?’ he asked. ‘And why?’
But she didn’t answer. Instead she got up awkwardly and took a single step towards the bet counter.
Calvin looked up at her urgently. ‘What were you trying to put right?’
Old Greybeard frowned at the counter.
Then at him.
‘I’m going,’ she said, and toppled over backwards, betting slip still in hand, and hit the floor with a cushioned thud.
‘Shit!’ Calvin slithered over the plastic chairs and dropped to his knees at her side. ‘Mike, call an ambulance!’
Old Greybeard was conscious. Staring straight up at the ceiling. All the training said to use the patient’s name. Keep them focused on you. But Calvin didn’t know her name.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘you’ll be fine.’
Her rheumy eyes turned his way. They looked sceptical.
‘Do you have angina or anything like that?’
She shook her head.
‘Taking any medication?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, hold on,’ he said. ‘An ambulance is coming.’
‘I’m going,’ she whispered through bluing lips.
‘No, you’re not,’ he said sternly, ‘you’re waiting for the ambulance.’ He glanced at the counter, where Dead Mike gave him the thumbs-up. ‘It’s on its way.’
Legs were all around them. The other punters. Watching. Murmuring. Calvin felt angry with them for no good reason.
‘I’m dying,’ Old Greybeard said faintly. ‘It’s my time.’
‘It’s not your time,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t be such a big baby!’
She laughed soundlessly – her lips tight on antique teeth. But her breathing was shallow and Calvin realized that at any minute now she could pass out and stop breathing and he might have to do CPR. He’d never done it in real life, only on a dummy, and the dummy hadn’t been bundled up in an anorak. He should take it off her. She’d probably collapsed because of the heat, and it would give her some relief. But she was an old lady and Calvin thought of his Nana Curley, and how she’d rather have died than had her vest exposed to a circle of strangers. Her spencer she’d called it, he remembered uselessly. So he didn’t take Old Greybeard’s coat off. He just held her hand and tried to remember how many compressions per minute . . .
Sylvie bustled from behind the counter with a glass of water, and Dennis Matthews bent down and gently slid his piles cushion under the old woman’s head.
‘Not long now,’ said Calvin. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
He wished he knew her name. He couldn’t ask now.
Old Greybeard suddenly turned her head and looked straight at him. ‘What that girl done to you was wrong.’
He was confused. ‘What girl?’
‘With that box of porn,’ she said.
Calvin froze.
But her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she squeezed Calvin’s hand hard, pulling him down to hear her better. He lowered himself with dread and she breathed into his ear. ‘We all do things we’re ashamed of.’
Then her hand slackened in his.
Shit.
He shook her arm. Shouted HELLO! in her face. Hello! Hello!—
She’s gone, said somebody Calvin could have punched. He felt fo
r her pulse. There was none. He yanked down the zip on her big winter coat and pushed it off her chest, relieved to see – not a vest, but an unexpectedly pretty blue blouse. He put his fingers on her sternum to measure the correct distance, feeling bra wires, then put one hand on top of the other and started compressions, pumping the blood for her stilled heart so that her brain wouldn’t die before the ambulance arrived.
Pump pump pump
‘Let’s give her some privacy,’ Sylvie said, and the legs started to move, to shuffle away towards the door.
Pump pump pump
Pump pump pump
And then the paramedics were there. So fast! Calvin hadn’t even heard the siren. He stood up and stood aside. He knew them. Maria and Dan. They nodded briefly.
What’s her name?
I don’t know.
Anyone?
Nobody knew, but nobody said Old Greybeard either.
Calvin said, ‘She got up and just keeled over. Talked for a bit and then boom, out like a light. She doesn’t have angina. Isn’t taking any medication.’
They nodded grimly and got to work. Smooth and fast. Airway check. Compressions. Oxygen. Compressions. Maria prepared a drip. Calvin looked around. Sylvie had ushered everybody out of the shop and was guarding the door. Calvin could see their backs through the window. Waiting to go on with their lives. Dead Mike was sat nearby on a plastic chair. Ashen-faced and looking even deader than usual.
‘You all right?’ asked Calvin, and he nodded.
‘Give me a hand to sit her up,’ said Dan and Calvin helped him to do that. They pulled her coat right off. Dan sliced through her shirtsleeve and the three of them exchanged surprised looks.
Old Greybeard’s left arm was covered in tattoos.
All words – many, many words – winding their way around her arm, blurry blue as they emerged from what remained of her sleeve, getting sharper, darker, newer, as they spiralled down towards her wrist and disappearing around the back of her arm, which wobbled with every compression.
Pump pump pump
Calvin could pick out words here and there: AIRBORNE MY LOVE . . .
The words meant nothing to him.
PSIDI . . . UM . . . ?
That wasn’t even a word.
Maria couldn’t see a vein among the blue ink. She cut off the right sleeve and started again.
Calvin held the old woman’s hand and read on: LARKSPUR MERCHANT VENTURA SIR IVOR BLAKENEY
He thought that rang a bell, and frowned to better remember. . . Sir Ivor. Hadn’t he won the Derby? Back in the sixties maybe?
As Dan pumped Old Greybeard’s chest and Maria blew air into her from a rubber balloon, Calvin searched Old Greybeard’s arm with new purpose.
RANKIN THEATRICAL NASHWAN
Nashwan had won the Derby, for sure.
These were horses!
Intrigue turned to triumph at a mystery solved. Partly solved, anyway . . . Calvin craned his head to see better, lifting the woman’s limp arm a little now and then to see more of the words.
‘We’ve got a pulse.’
Calvin read faster. Raised and lowered her arm. Craned his neck as much as he could without making it obvious, and, as the list trickled down the old woman’s wrinkled arm, the names of the horses became fresher to his memory. TEENOSO and, a few lines later, REFERENCE POINT. Both Derby winners. TERIMON had famously finished second in the race at 500–1. MASTEROFTHEHORSE had never stood a chance against the sublime SEA THE STARS. And only last year RIDEOUT had run second at 33–1. Calvin knew because he’d backed him. To win, of course. The last name on the list – only an inch above Old Greybeard’s bony wrist – was SEASPEAK. Calvin frowned. That made no sense. Seaspeak was in this year’s Derby field, but the race was still a week away . . .
‘Calvin?’
He looked up. ‘Sorry?’
‘We need to move her.’ Maria was looking at him and he realized they must have already asked him once, and that he was in the way. He stood up and moved aside as they raised the trolley and wheeled her towards the door.
‘Will she be OK?’
Dan gave a brief shrug of one shoulder. ‘You coming with her?’
Because he was a policeman.
‘Yes.’
Because of her arm. He couldn’t lie to himself.
And so Old Greybeard was carried out of the bookies on her shield. As he hurried after her, Calvin bent and picked up the crumpled betting slip she had dropped, and put it on the counter with a pound coin.
‘That’s hers,’ he said to Sylvie. Then he went through the door and past the punters who were waiting to be allowed back inside. There weren’t as many as there had been. Calvin imagined some had gone to the pub or down the road to William Hill. Others back home, to speak to their wives of how life is short, and to turn over new leaves, which would fast turn into old rotten leaves. Calvin knew. It had taken him years to lose that aching sense of destiny every time he dealt with death.
The journey to the hospital was fast and swaying, and the siren was too loud for proper conversation. He just held on to a handgrip that looked to be there for the purpose. He sat near the doors and watched Maria work on the old woman, admiring her skill and quiet efficiency.
‘You think she’ll be OK?’ he leaned forward to shout.
Maria glanced at the unconscious woman before shaking her head. No. Then she turned away and busied herself with a beeping monitor.
Calvin was sorry Old Greybeard was going to die, but it was not a tragedy. She’d lived a long and apparently good life, and died in a place she’d spent more time in than home, and with somebody holding her hand. Even managed a few final words, although Calvin couldn’t imagine how she’d found out about the box of porn. Thank God nobody else had heard her.
They swung hard left and then right, and then lurched to a halt.
The doors opened and he stepped down and watched Dan and Maria wheel Old Greybeard into A&E, then went into the waiting room and sat down.
He wondered how far back the list of Derby horses went. How old she’d been when she’d had her first tattoo. The scandal it must have caused! He wondered why she’d done it and what those horses had meant to her that she’d had them marked for ever on her own skin. There were winners among them, but losers too. And why include Seaspeak, when this year’s Derby hadn’t even been—
Calvin’s jaw dropped.
The names on Old Greybeard’s arm were not a record of random Derby runners. They were her tips !
The sheer boldness of it took Calvin’s breath away.
Punters lied like fishermen. They minimized their losses and inflated their winnings.
But not Old Greybeard.
What was it she’d said?
Have the courage of your own convictions. And she wore hers right there on her arm every day of her life.
Calvin felt new respect for Old Greybeard. Win or lose, those were her choices, and she stood by them.
He took out his phone and checked the Derby market. Seaspeak had attracted little support. No surprise there – the trainer was small, the horse by a jumps sire, and the two-year-old form muddled. A single placed run in a nine-furlong race at Lingfield was the only real point of interest, but it was in the mud, and the form was questionable. Seaspeak’s Derby price reflected his chance, at 25–1 in a ten-horse race.
Rumbaba, however, was now 4–1 joint favourite with the Dewhurst winner, and Calvin felt the familiar flutter of panic that came every time he saw the horse’s name. Tipping it to Dennis Matthews had drained every bit of joy from the anticipation of pulling off a massive coup.
Ego and ignorance . . .
Maria tapped him on the shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘She didn’t make it.’
Calvin stood up.
‘Looked like a major coronary
event. Nobody could have saved her.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Do you know her name? For the paperwork.’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Well, I have her personal possessions here. Can I give them to you?’
He wondered why, then remembered he was a police officer. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure they’re handed over to her next of kin when we track them down.’
He took a big plastic ziplock bag from her, of which only one small corner had anything in it, and signed a form saying he’d received whatever it was.
‘Thanks, Maria.’
‘No problem,’ she smiled. ‘See you around, Cal.’
He said goodbye and watched her walk away. He didn’t know that she knew his name. Nobody called him Cal.
He could get used to it.
On the bus back to Bideford, he looked through Old Greybeard’s stuff. There wasn’t much. A gold St Christopher medal with BD77 engraved on the back. A little blue leather purse containing a ten-pound note and some loose change. A handful of small brown nuggets that smelled faintly of fish, and a creased Morrisons receipt for cat food and milk. No ID. Not even loyalty cards.
Nothing with a name on it.
And without a name, he couldn’t find out who she was, or where she lived or what she’d meant by what she’d said to Reggie at the funeral – or a hundred other things that Calvin now had to add to the long list of stuff that they didn’t know about the death of Albert Cann.
‘Bad break,’ said DCI King.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Calvin. ‘Specially for her.’
She turned the St Christopher over and frowned. ‘What’s BD77?’
‘Don’t know, ma’am. All I can find on Google is a silicone transistor code.’
‘Probably initials. And a birthdate maybe?’ She handed the medal back to him and scooped an olive from her jar. ‘Have you checked the supermarket?’
She meant the receipt from Morrisons. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
He’d watched CCTV of Old Greybeard going through the till with her milk and her cat food, but nobody had remembered her. Just another old person hidden by her age. Her story untold.
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