Dying to Know (5 page)

He looked alarmed. ‘Is that bad?'

I smiled reassuringly; how to smile reassuringly is the first and most useful thing they teach you at medical school. ‘Not at all. I'll arrange for you to have some physiotherapy at Mayday. In the meantime, some painkillers will help.'

‘I've tried paracetamol. That didn't touch it.'

Lesson number two was the ever-so-slightly condescending tone. ‘I think you'll find these a little bit stronger,' I said as I wrote his prescription and handed it to him. ‘And you need to rest it. Ideally, you should be sleeping on a firm mattress and taking time off work.'

He shook his head firmly. ‘No. I've got to keep working, I'm self-employed. The bills don't pay themselves, you know.'

Words of wisdom from my father came back to me.
Never argue with the buggers. You won't win and, if you do, they'll never forgive you.

I shrugged. ‘It's up to you, Mr Hocking.'

SIX

A
t last, my torment ended and I could escape to the restroom for some coffee and a biscuit. I felt as if I had been awake solidly for thirty-six hours.

Jack, of course, spotted it immediately. Jack Thorpe was a good doctor but that didn't necessarily mean he was a kind man; expose your neck to Jack and it was odds on you'd find teeth marks in it the next time you looked in the mirror.

‘Good God, man. You look worse than me, and I was the one on call last night.'

‘I probably feel worse than you, too.'

‘Couldn't you sleep?' This question was immediately followed by the abrupt appearance of a leer on his round, rather bulging features. ‘Oh, I get it. You and that bit of totty of yours. What's her name? Chris? Tina?'

‘Max. And, no—'

‘That's it. Max. Had a good night, did you?' He shot a glance over at Brian, the third partner in the practice, to see if he were enjoying the sport, but Brian wasn't listening; I think that Brian had long ago decided that since listening was a part of the job, he wasn't about to start doing it in his spare time. He was biting into a bourbon biscuit, crumbs falling on a slightly stained dark-green tie.

I said, ‘It wasn't that . . .'

Which, of course, only made matters worse.

‘Oh! Turn you down, did she? Been lying alone in bed with an ache in the groin and a feeling of inferiority?'

Jane, our nurse, came in and I turned to her. ‘Help me, Jane.'

Jane was tall and self-possessed and beautiful, just as a nurse should be. If you're going to have to bend over with your trousers at half-mast while a nurse sticks a hypodermic needle in your rear end, it's important that she looks like Jane.

‘What is it?' she asked.

In a fit of sex equality to keep in with the prevailing social trends, we had agreed that she might be allowed to share our coffee breaks; we were quite enlightened for those dim, distant days. She poured some coffee and sat down, eschewing the plate of biscuits that Brian offered her.

‘Jack's being unpleasant.'

Having sipped the coffee, made a face and put the cup and saucer down, she said, ‘Really? I can't believe that.'

Jack countered with: ‘Dr Elliot's feeling sorry for himself. Couldn't get his end away last night.'

‘It's true that I didn't have a very good night, but that was because my father got into a little bit of trouble.'

As I would have expected her to, Jane said at once, ‘Not serious, I hope.'

I sighed. ‘I hope so, too.'

‘What's he been up to now?' asked Jack. Dad's foibles were well known, especially amongst the medical community.

I didn't want to give details – not, at least, to Jack – and said vaguely, ‘Oh, just a small dispute with a neighbour.'

Brian made a contribution while masticating the last of his bourbon, thus slightly muffling his elocution. ‘I wouldn't minimize the importance of arguments between neighbours. They can get quite nasty.'

‘This one is nothing,' I said firmly.

Over breakfast that morning, I had confronted Dad over the matter, trying to find out exactly what were the problems between him and the Lightollers.

‘They're such a peculiar couple,' had been his first reason and one, moreover, that caused me to suppress the obvious rejoinder.

‘In what way?'

‘Secretive.'

‘So?'

‘And mean. Do you know, they were positively abusive last week when I called on them to collect for Remembrance Day. They said they were pacifists and didn't agree with the whole notion.'

I could see that this would upset Dad. ‘Perhaps they really are pacifists,' I said gently.

‘In my book, whether they're pacifists or just mean, they're still a bad sort.'

‘In future, then, don't call on them when you collect,' I suggested.

‘Don't worry, I won't. And I've made sure that they're on the blacklist at the British Legion.' He made this sound as if the Legion were equalled in vindictiveness and unpleasantness only by the Cosa Nostra. ‘It's more than that, though. I could swear that they're up to something. Something illegal.'

‘What?'

To which his answer was a shrug and I reflected that as a standard of proof, it lacked a certain something. I asked, ‘What does Lightoller do?'

‘He
says
he's an antiques dealer.' He emphasized the second word to tell me that he believed not a word of it. ‘He's got some sort of junk shop on the London Road opposite the site where Sainsbury's used to be.'

‘One man's junk is another man's desirable.'

‘Complete and utter tripe. Most junk is junk, no matter how you describe it, and that's what's in his shop. I've had a nose around. I know.'

‘If it's junk, how does he manage to sell it?'

Continuing to smear butter while looking up at me, he said, ‘That's a very good point. How does he?' To which, since I had not the answer, I could make no reply, thus allowing my dear papa to launch himself into his theory. ‘I think he's a fence.'

‘A fence? For stolen property?'

‘Of course for stolen property. Apart from things made of chain-link or wood, what other kind is there?'

Conversations with my father could leave me more short of wind than a ten-mile run. After a moment or two of speechlessness, I asked, ‘What proof do you have of this slander?'

‘It's as plain as a boil on the end of a nose. He sells rubbish and, anyway, he hardly has any customers in that shop. I know; I've stood and watched.'

I didn't know which was more disturbing, the fact that he spent his time hanging around street corners keeping tabs on innocent citizens, or the fact that he thought it was normal behaviour. For a moment, the vision that he conjured before me held my attention, then I shook my head. Firmness was what was required here; give Dad any room and he'd be off after wild geese with a loud cry of pleasure, and have me following behind. ‘Don't, Dad.'

‘Don't what?'

‘Don't fantasize. Lightoller's just an ordinary shopkeeper trying to make an honest profit.'

He stopped buttering his toast so great was his incredulity. ‘What an oaf you are, Lance.'

‘Am I?'

The buttering resumed with twice as much energy before he put the knife down and reached for the marmalade. ‘Where's the spoon?'

‘Use your knife.'

This produced a sad shake of the head. ‘An oaf and a slob,' he commented as he stood up to fetch a spoon from the cutlery drawer.

‘Thanks.'

He sat back down and showed me how a refined and civilized man behaved when faced with transferring marmalade from jar to toast. ‘He's taken against me, Lance. I can't help that. They started it, but I'm damned if I'm going to lie down and take it.'

‘You did accuse him of killing his wife.'

He dismissed this as only my father could. ‘A perfectly understandable mistake. They'd had some sort of argument and then, suddenly, she's not there any more. No explanation, no nothing.' It occurred to me that there was no reason why Dad should have been given an explanation, but I said nothing for he continued, ‘It was a real humdinger of a row, too. I had to bang repeatedly on the wall to get them to shut up.'

Gently, I said, ‘I'm sure that your motives were beyond reproach, but can't you see that in the aftermath of the accusation there is going to be a tincy-wincy bit of resentment on his part?'

‘An innocent man has nothing to fear,' he proclaimed pompously.

‘Fear and feeling pissed off that your neighbour's accused you of murder are two different things.'

He ignored this. ‘He was the one who notched things up by taking out that claim that my fence was on his property. He should have left things as they were.'

I asked with considerable trepidation, ‘Out of interest,
is
the fence on his property?'

He had got up to fetch some more toast from the toaster so his back was to me as he replied, but I could see even from this disadvantageous view that he was wishing I hadn't asked. ‘It's very complicated,' was his only response.

For a while, he chewed toast and I drank tea and there was no more said on the subject, but I couldn't let it lie.

‘You ought to make an effort to repair the relationship. No good will come of the affair if you don't.'

He was outraged. ‘Me?' he demanded, or rather squeaked.

‘Yes. You. You're the professional, the pillar of the community.'

He sat back in the chair, staring at me, knife in hand and fleck of marmalade in his beard; I wondered how many other flecks of marmalade had gone into that hairy wilderness over the years, never to be seen again; a jarful, perhaps? He pointed out, ‘I didn't start it.'

‘No, but you can be the one to finish it. At least talk to him, Dad. I'm not suggesting that you should take the blame—'

‘You'd bloody well better not! The man's a poltroon and a blackguard. I'll be damned if I abase myself in front of such a milquetoast.'

‘But you can at least suggest that you and he should put the past to one side and start again.'

He relaxed, leaned forward and began ingesting more toast, his beard acting as a sort of safety net for wayward crumbs. Through the crumbs that had not escaped their fate and were being masticated in a most enthusiastic manner, he said, ‘He wouldn't be interested, Lance. He's only happy when he's making trouble and having arguments.'

My mug was emptied of tea and I stood up to put it in the sink. ‘All the same, I think you should try.'

He grunted, but whether it was with acquiescence or defiance I couldn't tell. I had to leave at that point, no nearer a solution to the problem of my father and the Lightollers.

And so, I repeated to Jane, ‘Absolutely nothing.'

I saw more reassurance on her face than I felt in my heart.

As it turned out, I was right to remain uncertain.

SEVEN

M
y midday calls weren't too arduous, thank goodness, so that I managed to stumble through them without too much mayhem and without, as far as I was able to judge, doing anything that might cause the General Medical Council to come knocking. My last call was in Strathyre Avenue, quite close to where Dad had said Lightoller's shop was, and so, when I drove back down the London Road, I looked for it. I didn't spot it, though, so turned left on to Warwick Road, parked the car a little way down and walked back.

That stretch of the London Road is not particularly prepossessing. To the north lie the leafier glades of Norbury, to the south the interesting example of suburban culture that is The Pond, a large roundabout in Thornton Heath surrounded by pubs, shops, a bingo hall and a small exhibition hall where the Horticultural Society show off its produce twice a year.

On foot, I found the shop easily. It was snuggling between a baker's and a grocery shop, but looking rather like their poor cousin. The sign above the grocer's read Parrish's Family Shop and, even more interestingly, the sign above the bakery read S.J.M. Hocking, Master Baker
.
Not for the first time I wondered what a master baker did that an ordinary one could not.

Despite the fact that it was early afternoon, there was a ‘closed' sign hanging in the door of the Lightollers' shop, which I thought was rather odd. I peered in and, at first sight, it appeared to be quite tidy but this impression – which was gained from the relatively uncluttered display in the front window – did not survive inspection of the inner recesses. These were difficult to make out because it was intensely gloomy, but the more I looked, the more I realized how disorganized, almost chaotic, things were. There were piles of books on the floor, heaps of papers on chairs, boxes and crates half-emptied everywhere. Ornaments lay scattered on the tops and shelves of items of furniture, mannequins were dotted around, and there was even a suit of armour. I remember thinking that Dad was right, that this was little more than a junk shop.

More detailed perusal, though, showed that there were a few jewels amongst the pebbles. In the double front of the shop, framed by peeling, in places rotting, painted wood, were various items of dirty brass, a staggering array of pottery and porcelain, a military standard, a pair of duelling pistols in the tatty box, services of cutlery, a backgammon set, a pack of ornate Tarot cards, a teddy bear (both eyes but no nose), a china doll (no eyes but a nose) and a stained hobby-horse (neither eyes nor nose). Further back, I could make out in the dim fluorescent lighting, that this was only a small collection of the delights on offer, and that there were innumerable items of furniture, carpets, musical instruments and three brass telescopes of varying size.