A Death to Remember Read online

  On the left-hand tag there was a minute sheet with a simple request from the Benefits supervisor. ‘Please interview. Claim for IB. No apparent Class I employment.’

  Simple enough. We’d had a claim for Industrial Injury Benefit from George Peters. To get the benefit, Peters had to show that the accident had happened during the course of his employment. So the Inspector had been asked to visit and clear it up. The Inspector had been me.

  On the right-hand tag was a small sheet of paper, written on it the simple statement:

  I wish to withdraw my claim to Industrial Injury benefit.

  George Peters. 16 November 1984.

  That had been the day.

  It was not in my handwriting, but it had been done with a fountain pen, and in the black ink I always preferred. I’d clearly lent him my pen to write with.

  ‘Could you get me the actual certificate?’ I asked, feeling I was stretching it a bit.

  ‘Anything you say, o’ master,’ she said, and before I could reply she was halfway down the stairs.

  I sat there and indulged in some more thoughts. Not very helpful ones. If this had been the sole file of my morning’s work, I’d have been out and back in half an hour. With the claim withdrawn, there would have been nothing to take me to Pool Street Motors, or anywhere else.

  She placed the medical certificate on the desk under my nose. It was a pink, Hospital one. The claim particulars had been completed in blue ball-point in the same immature writing as the withdrawal note. The certified incapacity was: Crushed Arm. Right. So George Peters had tried it on, had been persuaded by me that he had no chance of claiming under the Industrial Injuries Act, and had withdrawn his claim. As Nicola had said, there was nothing there, particularly as, for name and address of employer, he had put: ?

  ‘Why did he write the withdrawal in black ink?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you lent him your gold pen, which your wife gave you for your birthday.’

  I glanced at her, but she was quite serious. ‘I might have done that. But if he had a blue ball-point pen already...’

  Now she was watching me with amusement. ‘Perhaps he filled in the form in hospital, but you saw him after he’d got home.’

  ‘All the same...’ I stared at the withdrawal. ‘Here, hold on a second. Look at this.’ I held up the file. ‘It’s with a fountain pen right enough, but not with mine.’

  An oblique nib produces fine and broad strokes. That’s the idea of it, and you can’t make it do otherwise. The withdrawal note was written with an ordinary nib.

  I uncapped my pen, which was dry, but in the drawer was my old bottle of black Quink. I filled the pen, and we both tried it. The penwork on the withdrawal was distinctly different.

  ‘He could have had his own fountain pen,’ she suggested.

  ‘Could have. It’s unlikely. Have you seen that street? It’s not fountain pen country. And he used a ball-point on his certificate. How old is he? Twenty-two. Not even born in the fountain pen era. It might be something, Nicola. It just might be.’

  ‘And it might not be a good idea to build too much on it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘But I could go and ask him.’

  She smiled sadly. All her face was four-square and sad. ‘But he’s not there. We tried to contact him, but he’d gone. Nobody had seen him for a week or so. You’d frightened him away, Cliff.’

  ‘I had? For trying it on? Never. I’d have laughed with him about it.’

  ‘Would you, though? Can you be so sure? I mean, can you remember that you’d have laughed with him?’

  She might have added: Can you remember that you didn’t accept a bribe? I grimaced at her, but she’d been very serious.

  ‘And Pool Street Motors?’ I asked. ‘What happened with them? If I went round there and stirred up trouble, then the same thing would’ve shown up on a check visit.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘This was you who did the check?’

  She perched herself on the edge of the desk, looking down at me. ‘It was done before I arrived here, but you can be sure there was somebody round there the next morning. That was Frank Inskip...’ She smiled at my expression. The present Local Insurance Officer. He’d stir no dust, rattle no bones. ‘Well...he was the reserve Inspector,’ she explained. ‘He went round with that detective sergeant. After all, the boss of the firm was under arrest and you’d got their books in your briefcase. But...’ One of her expressive shrugs, which nearly slid her off the desk. ‘...they found nothing. The books were terribly kept, but there was nothing illegal from our point of view.’

  ‘And the wife?’

  ‘She was there, because she did the secretarial work. I heard all about it. In near hysterics, as you can guess. She said you’d hinted at accepting some money, though she couldn’t explain what for, and she had some cash in an envelope, so she slipped it into the wages book when she handed it over. She said she was sure you saw what she was doing, but apparently her husband did, too, because he bawled her out after you’d left, and dashed off after you. I’m sorry, Cliff, but that was how I heard it.’

  She was eyeing me with concern, and certainly I didn’t feel too good. It was like staring at yourself in the shaving mirror as you scraped off the layers of soap, and finding a different face being gradually revealed. I wanted to grab up the shaving brush and cover it over again quickly, but already it was too late because the lather was drying and flaking, and falling off quicker than I could replace it.

  I didn’t like the face I saw. It scared me. I cleared my throat. ‘If the books showed nothing wrong, why would I be offered a bribe?’

  ‘Nobody could understand that. But they knew you here, Cliff. No, don’t look like that. I didn’t mean as a crook. I meant as an Inspector. The opinion was that if there was anything to find, you’d have found it. The fact that nobody else could see it might have meant nothing.’

  I decided that was a compliment. A small patch of lather got replaced. But it was also a hint.

  ‘You mean I might still find it, after a year?’ I asked miserably.

  ‘No. Not that. I meant I might. I could go there and do the place over, end to end....’

  ‘No!’ It came out violently, sufficiently so to send her eyebrows skating up into her fringe. ‘I’d rather you kept out of it,’ I said, less forcefully.

  ‘Oh?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you think I could do it? I believe I’m as good as you were, Cliff Summers.’

  I sighed. ‘Sure. Probably better. But...whatever I found, it got me beaten over the head.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ She stood over me and pointed a finger at my nose. ‘It was accepting a bribe that did that. I don’t accept bribes, thank you very much.’

  I was on my feet, her finger now firmly against my chest. ‘And nor do I!’ I shouted.

  The walls in that place were thin. They were washing up in the canteen, and somebody dropped a plate. Nicola was grinning at me, her ears coming forward as though to meet the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Sure?’ she asked, and we both knew she’d prodded free a portion of my lost personality. We both knew I didn’t accept bribes.

  The blood had run from my face, and I stood there, staring into those brilliantly perceptive eyes until it returned. Then I lifted the finger from my chest and kissed the tip of it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Any time. You’ll keep me in touch?’ she asked – demanded – knowing what I had to do.

  ‘Of course.’

  I began to shuffle my loose belongings into the envelope, and glanced up. ‘I should have a car on the road tomorrow. What d’you say we drive out together for a meal somewhere?’

  ‘Mine’s on the road right now,’ she countered. ‘What’s the matter with tonight?’

  Nothing was the matter with it. I gave her the address of my Aunt Peg, where I was living, and she said she’d pick me up around seven-thirty.

  ‘So be sure you’re ready,’ she said.

  A b
ossy woman, if you gave her the chance, I thought.

  ‘My memory being so rotten, I’ll let you pick the place.’

  ‘Oh, I’d already decided that,’ she told me blandly, but there was fun in her eyes.

  I walked away from my old office with no regrets. Usually, on retirement, there’s a bit of a party and handshakes and all the emotional stuff that charges the nostalgia batteries and leaves you miserable for the next month. I hadn’t had that. I could turn my back on it without glancing back. The only item of interest in that building was coming out with me for dinner. I had a bet with myself that she’d choose the Swan at Mecklin.

  Reaching Rock Street required a bus on the same route as I’d used to come into town, as it was the other side of the pool from Pool Street Motors. I didn’t call in to see what they were doing with my car.

  Along Rock Street was the old entrance gate to the flower-pot factory. Beyond it, and above the surrounding walls, the tops of the kilns were still visible, but all that ground was now derelict because the new factory fronted onto the main Mecklin road, and was all hum but no fumes. The terraced run of houses had been built for the original factory employees. All they’d had to do was cross the street and they’d be there. Grand for them in the bad weather, but it left them short of excuses for being late. Nowadays they commuted. The car park was larger than the whole of the original factory. Progress, that was.

  The terraces were a straight, flat run of roofing, only varying as the rise of the road dictated. Every sixth house, there was a tunnel to a rear alleyway along the back. The fronts were level with the pavement. There were three floors to each house, the rooms one behind the other. Very soon it would all fall down, unless the bulldozers got there first. Two-thirds had broken windows or boarded ones. The lace curtains here and there meant occupation. They were the signal: knock first before you push me over, I might be in bed.

  The only time I could remember visiting that street was on a FAM fraud case, a man having left his common-law wife and taken her Child Allowance book with him. When I found him, he’d had similar books from five other common-law wives. One way of making a living, I suppose.

  I stood outside number seventeen, and recalled nothing of the visit I must have made. I stood opposite number seventeen, rather, and suddenly realised that I would have driven up that day, and not walked. I crossed the street and stood at the front door, and felt a cautious tinkle of memory, like a distant bell. There was something about the wrecked door of the adjoining house, and the grey, tangled drape of the lace curtains at number seventeen, ground floor. One passing year was nothing in the life of those curtains. I went up the two steps and pushed open the front door.

  No locks on these fronts doors, no need. There would be bedsitters in the six or so available rooms, the old kitchen at the back no more, now, than a musty shell. Seventeen A and B downstairs, I knew, seventeen C and D on the next floor. The wooden stairs were bare and creaking. I turned right at the top. And stopped. How did I know to turn right? But there it was, painted dimly on the door. 17C.

  It was very slightly ajar.

  I told myself that he’d heard me coming, and this was a welcome. My tap was more of a push, so that the door swung open. The man was standing by the bed with his hands beneath the thin mattress, about to turn it over. He straightened, and turned, no expression on his long, sharp face. He was in his twenties, in jeans and a short black imitation leather jacket with a checked shirt beneath it, a little taller than me, but thinner. I decided I could handle him, then wondered why I’d thought that. It was his lack of expression, I suppose, when I’d have expected at least surprise. But from that lack of expression I knew him, had met him, and equated him with violence.

  That was the trouble. I knew him, but not in that setting. He could not be George Peters.

  ‘George Peters?’ I asked, nevertheless.

  ‘Who wants him?’

  I knew the voice, too, flat and a little hoarse, giving nothing. It was alien to this room as I knew it, and I did know it. That was strange, that it had altered not at all in more than a year. The bed was the same dilapidated mess, the table plain and its surface greasy, two chairs (upright), one chair (easy, if you could stand the springs and the collapsed seat). A cupboard, a mini-cooker, an electric fire. I knew it. I had been there. George Peters had sat at that table...

  ‘The name’s Summers,’ I said. ‘Who’re you?’

  He shrugged, looking round. ‘He ain’t been around for a year or more. Reckon they wanta let the room again, so I come to see if it’d do me.’

  ‘And does it?’

  He’d been lying. The room wouldn’t have been left as it was unless the rent had been paid. George Peters might have walked out of there only an hour before. It was exactly as I recalled it.

  It was perhaps the lack of change that crystallised the image. Peters was there, sitting at that table in one of those upright chairs, writing out a statement...

  A statement! I had it clearly, then, in my mind’s eye. Not a short note of withdrawal, but a statement, on a full-size blank minute sheet. I saw him doing it, laboriously, using my fountain pen and cursing it because he was left-handed and the oblique nib was tailored for the right hand.

  ‘...what the hell you want here,’ he was saying.

  It was almost a physical pain to withdraw myself from the vision. I didn’t want to lose George Peters.

  I found that I was feeling relaxed, and the style I was using must have been natural to me. The shrug was easy.

  ‘Oh...just looked in on the off-chance. I lent him my pen, and forgot to get it back.’

  His lip was curling. ‘Y’ can’t tell me...when was this?’

  ‘Over a year ago.’

  ‘After all this time...’

  You need to talk them down, quietly, so that they have to listen. ‘It’s a valuable pen, and I’ve been out of circulation, sort of.’

  There was an instant spark in his eye. That meant something to him. What it meant was that I’d been inside. Prison, I mean. Only a certain type of person will jump to that conclusion, and also, as he was doing, begin to relax when reaching it.

  ‘I’ll just have a quick look,’ I said.

  But I was too late. He’d stiffened. ‘Heh! I know you.’

  So at last he’d identified me, and it did not please him. Suddenly he didn’t want to be in the same room with Cliff Summers, and yet he didn’t want to leave it. That meant that Cliff Summers had to be the one to leave. Even his expressionless face revealed that. His voice hardened.

  ‘You can just bugger off, mate,’ he said. ‘You didn’t leave no bloody pen here, and he ain’t here. So bog off, while y’ got the chance.’

  And leave him there? Not likely. I opened the door and stood back. ‘After you.’

  ‘Now you look here...’

  ‘You’ve got no more right in here than I have, friend. This room isn’t to let, and you know it. Look round you. Do you see a year’s dust? You leave now, or I call the police.’

  It was a bluff, but I had a feeling his aggression was forced. He’d been going over the room, or starting to. If I went for the police, he’d have time to turn the place upside-down and disappear before I’d even found a phone. But I couldn’t leave him in that room, doing it, without even a gesture.

  He looked at me with disgust. This didn’t require any effort towards expression, just a lifted lip and a pathetic spit on a carpet that could take it. Then he walked past me, and stood there while I slammed the door. If he was to leave, he was making sure I didn’t stay.

  A pity. I’d have liked a quiet few minutes with that room, conjuring with the memory of George Peters at the table. Given sufficient relaxed concentration, I might even have remembered exactly what statement he’d been making.

  I had not the slightest doubt that my friend would be heading back to that room as soon as I was out of the way, but there was nothing I could do about it. The door had looked as though it wouldn’t resist the merest hint of
a strip of plastic.

  I went home to prepare myself for an evening meal with Nicola. I was living with my Aunt Peg, out on the Liversey Road. I wasn’t too happy about that, because I couldn’t afford to pay her much, so that really she was worse off than she’d have been if I hadn’t been there. This worried me, but she’d have been upset if I’d suggested moving. In fact, I had a suspicion she was glad I was in a weak financial position and couldn’t afford to leave her. But my aunt was never demonstrative, like all my mother’s family, and any affection we had for each other had to be hidden behind a cloak of decorum. In her case, it was a constant, purse-lipped disapproval, in mine a bland dismissal of it. So we got along fine.

  Like this:

  I bounced into the kitchen, in which she seemed to spend her life, and asked: ‘Can I borrow the ironing board?’

  Suspicion. ‘What for?’

  ‘Press my suit. I’m going out.’

  Sadness and disillusionment. ‘I’ve got some lovely lamb chops.’

  ‘Come on. They’ll keep.’

  Resigned. ‘Gadding about! Is this a woman?’ But putting up the ironing board for me.

  ‘Dinner with a lady.’

  Raised eyebrows. ‘And I suppose I’m not to meet her?’

  ‘You wouldn’t approve. She’s got a sense of humour.’

  ‘Since when didn’t I enjoy a good laugh?’ Standing back, all dour challenge.

  ‘Since George Robey.’

  Laughing. ‘Now there was a one!’ Impatience. ‘So where’s this suit of yours?’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘You can just go and have a bath, and that face could do with shaving. And you’re not holding yourself right, Clifford. You’re slumping. Never make the most of what you’ve got, you youngsters.’

  I was forty-one. ‘I’ll get the suit.’

  ‘And how do you think you can afford to show a woman a good time...’

  Like that. I got out of there before she offered to lend me money.

  But all the same, climbing out of the bath and facing the mirror, I had to admit that I was out of shape. It’d been a convalescent home, not a health spa. I straightened my shoulders, scraped the old chin, fished out a clean shirt, and went down in my dressing gown.