A Death to Remember (25 page)

I
went to buy a cup of coffee, very pleased that I could still manage that simple action.

16

It was a long while before I realised I had not asked Graham about the keys in my car, even longer before I remembered I should have asked him why he’d been searching George’s room. But by then it didn’t matter.

I
was in the shopping complex beyond the bus station. I hadn’t got far, but I’d managed to move. My fingers were playing with a carpeted surface. For some moments I could concentrate on this, on the awareness that they’d surfaced the concrete benches with pieces of carpet to take the chill from them. There was comfort in the thought that I could sit there as long as I liked, but this was a release to my mind, which, having parked me safely, flew away again into chaos. The present slid away.

There
’s nothing unusual in this. Quite often, pondering deeply, it’s possible to return to the present and realise your train’s run through two stations and you hadn’t even noticed. Worse, perhaps, when you’re driving: that four or five sets of traffic signals are behind you, and you can’t remember driving through them. Perhaps on red! But it’s all right. Nothing to worry about, because your mind’s right on the job, part of it controlling the car, observing, operating normally. The real and the present are still dominating, the contemplation in the background.

But
what happens when the contemplation becomes dominant, and all there is to contemplate is a mess of darkness? When reality is no haven to which you can awaken with relief and hope? Reality was a cold seat, a draught round my ankles, a splitting pain in my head.

I
raised my eyes, the focus slow in adjusting.

A
man in a green uniform was standing in front of me, looking down at me with concern, one of the precinct guards the council had regrettably had to take on in case of trouble. I was trouble. I turned my head and looked around. I was his only trouble. At closing time, barriers at each end of the complex were shut and locked. Another recent happy innovation. Now the place was empty, except for me.

‘
Can’t stay here,’ he said, shaking his head, his radio in his hand just in case I disputed it.

‘
No,’ I agreed.

‘
Got anywhere to go?’ He was concerned.

‘
Yes. Somewhere to go.’

A
hundred places there were to go, but would I want to be there when I arrived?

‘
Got to lock up,’ he said, watching me as I forced myself to my feet. Probably he had this every day, the job of clearing out the vagrants who really did have no place to go. He was kind about it.

I
found myself the wrong side of the barrier, the guard still at my elbow. I need help, I thought, but didn’t know in what way.

I
need Nicola, I thought.

It
seemed like a blinding flash of inspiration, but Nicola was in the present of my life, and I’d been watching George Peters writing out the statement that he hadn’t written, and I’d seen Tessa Clayton offering me money in an envelope that she hadn’t offered. They would continue to do that until I found the magic word to silence them. It was a miracle that Nicola had been able to intrude.

I
had no idea of the time. Twice I raised my wrist and stared at my watch, but the information didn’t register. All I knew was that I had to reach Nicola. Hadn’t she said something about her place? Wasn’t I going there for some reason? Books entered into it. Office records. I was supposed to be going to Nicola’s place...but I couldn’t remember where it was.

The
only possibility was to go to the Social Security office and hope she was there. My legs led me there. So many times I’d found my way to that office, from all directions, that I simply allowed instinct to take over, whilst in my mind Graham was again charging at me and attacking me, and I was sliding on my back into that oily black corner...

I
realised that I now knew where my green Harris tweed jacket was. Soaked in grease and black oil, it was hanging amongst all those equally black overalls along the back wall of the foreman’s office at Pool Street Motors. In that office I must have emptied my pockets – why else had my wallet been in the briefcase? – and hung it up out of the way. One ruined jacket. And hung my keys on the rack of hooks there? No, no! That image was false. As false as all my other images? No...wait, my brain shouted. My images were real, even if distorted and inaccurate.

I
stood in the empty and dark parking patch of the Social Security office, realising that I had made a logical thought. It might have been wrong, but I’d
used
my brain. When I raised my eyes to the dark, blank windows, I could barely see them for the tears in my eyes.

And
then I could again see Tessa offering me a piece of brown paper, or an old envelope, with a number on it...and my self-congratulation collapsed. I needed Nicola, and her window was as dark as the others.

My
hand fumbled the key into the side door and I opened it, went inside, made my way up the stairs. I was putting on lights as I went. It seemed to me that I was making signals in the darkness, signals that might bring her to me. I made no attempt to be silent. All was long past the point where I might worry what was right and what was wrong.

She
had been working there. The briefcase was on the floor, open, beside her chair...our chair. On the desk was spread half a dozen books, one of them open. She had been sitting there, working, and had got to her feet and walked out.

I
sat in the chair. These books I recognised. I’d seen them before, battered, corners dog-eared, oily and fingered, with no titles on their covers. Oh yes, I’d seen them before, in a pile on Clayton’s desk in his main office. They were the poorly-kept, even pitiful, office records with which he’d managed to run his business. Bank statements. Cheque book stubs. Petty-cash. Invoices. Work sheets. MOT records. Wages book.

Wages
book?

Wages
meant that he’d paid wages. Deep, that, but relevant. I opened it. Yes, this was his wages book. Barely readable because of the illiterate writing and the childish figures, smeared with oil, in places dissolved by oil, but nevertheless there were gross amounts, deductions for income tax and insurance and sundries, and weekly payments. C. Graham. G. Tranter. A. Pitt.

This
meant that he
had
employed these three men, that he
had
kept the correct records and made the correct payments. There had therefore been nothing wrong. I’d have made no fuss about
that
aspect of the work. It was no more than confirmation that there could have been no official demand or request from me for money.

I
got up from the chair abruptly, rubbing my face with my palms. Then I sat again. My whole afternoon at the garage must have been spent on the entirely different aspect of the accident to George Peters, which hadn’t happened.

The
terrible thing was that I knew I had never seen inside the covers of those books. There would have been no need to take them away, except as a favour for Tessa, as an excuse to smuggle out an envelope of money for her...but she had had no envelope of money to slide between the pages of that wages book, because Clayton had slipped it into his pocket.

What
I should have done at that point was get up and walk away from that desk. But the desk was my only contact with Nicola. I sat, eyes shut, and concentrated. Her address – she’d given it to me. Nothing came. I could phone – but I didn’t even know her surname. Nicola...what? But I’d heard it once. Only once. My former manager had used her surname. Hadn’t he said: ‘I thought I heard Miss So-and-so...’

Miss
Waldron!

I
opened my eyes and reached for the phone book. Waldron, Waldron. Nancy, Neville...Nicola!

The
phone had been left connected through. My finger shook as I dialled. It rang, and at once a voice answered.

‘
Nicky! Thank heaven, I was...’

‘
It’s not Nicola,’ I said, already feeling rattled.

Silence.
It was a woman who had answered. Now it was agony to keep torturing my memory for facts.

‘
Is that Marsha?’ I asked.

‘
Yes...Who...’

‘
My name’s Cliff Summers.’

‘
Oh...yes.’

‘
I must reach her.’

‘
I don’t know...’ Then Marsha’s own worry came tumbling free. ‘She was at the office. I was expecting her home. Was cooking something special, because
you
were coming.’

‘
Yes.’

‘
She phoned. Said she’d come across something. You know what she’s like. Simply had to check it, not a moment to lose. She said she might be late, and I was to keep you entertained, but
you
haven’t come, and it’s
all
spoiling...’

‘
I’m sorry.’ Her voice had been climbing into hysteria. ‘Marsha, did she say
what
she’d come across?’

‘
No.’

‘
Or where she was going?’

‘
What’re we going to do?’

‘
Or anything at all?’ I pleaded.

‘
She said something about a Day Work Book.’

‘
Day Work Book?’ What the hell was that?

‘
Yes.’

‘
That’s all?’

‘
Oh,
where
could she have gone?’ Marsha wailed.

‘
I’ll find out,’ I promised emptily. ‘What exactly did she say about this Day Work Book?’

A
pause. A clicking sound of a tongue expressing annoyance. ‘I know,’ she burst out. ‘She said it wasn’t with the rest, and she was going to chase it up.’

‘
Thank you,’ I managed to say.

I
hung up, stared at the books, then sorted through them frantically. What on earth could Nicola have meant? There was certainly nothing to record the daily input of work and its clearance. The words Day Work Book would have described it. But where...

It
should have been simple to work out. Nicola had said she’d be late. The person she would have to approach would be Michael Orton. She had jumped from her seat and dashed out to see him. But surely not at his office. Orton never stayed late. So...at his home? Had she really gone dashing along to see him at his home? My previous home! Oh...surely not. But I
had
told her he’d taken the books home.

I
was already dialling the number. It rang. The same thing happened.

‘
Michael?’ she asked. ‘Where are you?’

‘
It’s Cliff, Val.’

‘
What the hell d’you think you’re doing, phoning me now...’

‘H
eh! Val, it’s me. Take it easy, will you.’

I
heard her take a deep breath. ‘Sorry Cliff. But I’m so worried. He hasn’t come home.’

Another
one! It didn’t take even the tattered remnants of my brain to put two and two together. The question now was where. Holding fiercely to panic, I said:

‘
Have you had a visitor?’

‘
Who? Oh, I see. A young lady.’

‘
Nicola...’

‘
She didn’t give her name.’

‘B
ut she came to see Michael?’

‘
How do you know this?’

‘
What time, Val?’

‘
What’s the matter with you?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve never used that tone with me.’

‘
What time?’

‘
Around seven.’

I
stared at my watch. Eight-thirty. ‘Did she say what she wanted?’

‘
I don’t know. Get off the line. He might be trying to get through.’

‘
Don’t you
dare
hang up,’ I snapped. ‘Val, do you hear me?’

‘
I hear you.’ Her voice was very small.

‘
Did she say what she wanted?’

‘
She was strange. You obviously know her. Don’t you find her strange?’

‘
What did...’

‘
All right. All right. Something about a book, an accounting book, I suppose. As though Michael would have it here! Really!’

‘
Did she say why...’

‘
No, she didn’t. We chatted. She said how much she liked my car. You know, the BMW.’

‘
But he didn’t arrive?’