A Death to Remember Read online

  I could remember something had got his goat. ‘But it’s not unusual. Didn’t mean the end of the world. We’d have sorted something out between us.’

  ‘That’s what you said then. Sort something out.’

  I stared at him, read his expression. ‘So it was assumed I was hinting at a bribe. Go on, Mr Clayton. What happened next?’

  ‘You don’t have to take that tone with me.’

  ‘Don’t I? You’re telling me the reason you chased after me and bounced me on the head with a spanner, and you’re complaining about my tone!’

  ‘I told you I didn’t do that.’

  ‘Oh, get on with it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘My wife had some petty cash in the drawer, in an envelope.’

  ‘Nearly six hundred pounds, I understand. It doesn’t sound petty to me.’ It would have been receipts for odd jobs paid for in cash, and therefore not reaching the books. It certainly sounded like the sort of place where I’d have found plenty of trouble.

  ‘She had this money,’ he said through his teeth, ‘and she saw where the smoke was blowing, so when she handed over the wages book she slipped the envelope inside it.’

  ‘And I was aware of this?’

  ‘Of course you were, or what’d be the point.’

  ‘And you were, too?’

  ‘Not till after you’d left. Then I found out. The stupid cow. I was wild, I can tell you. I’d have called your bluff...’

  ‘So you came after me and tried to brain me, to get it back?’

  ‘I came after you. I found you unconscious.’

  ‘Well thanks. You found me unconscious, and your first thought was your damned money.’

  ‘I didn’t lie about it. That’s what I told the police.’

  ‘Then don’t sound so smug about it.’

  I was getting him angry again. ‘Are you coming into the office for that insurance cover?’ he demanded, looking as though one word more would have him tearing my arms out.

  ‘I’ll be in...give me a minute.’

  When he turned away I slid behind the wheel and stared for a while through the windscreen, seeing nothing. It was clear that I’d created quite a whirlwind of trouble at this place on November the 16th, sixteen months before. But that meant I’d found trouble, and so far the only hint of anything serious had been my memory of George Peters’ statement, and that had been dredged from a mind I could not trust. And even that could surely not have attracted a £600 bribe. There had to be a misunderstanding over that, one that had infuriated Tony Clayton.

  It surely wouldn’t have required an adjustable spanner to put it right.

  Angry at the thought, I climbed out of the car.

  ‘And they’ve been using the boot to dump their rubbish,’ I said, marching into the self-service shop, and having opened the boot lid to see whether my tools were still there.

  Annoyed, he stamped out after me, to check. I’d left the boot lid up.

  The Volvo’s boot is huge. You could’ve camped in it. What they’d dumped inside it was one of those large black plastic bags that garages use for their rubbish. This one was bulging with something, its neck tied tightly with string.

  The something, I now realised, had a pattern of bumps that created a picture of the contents, and it wasn’t sundry rubbish. It had the shape of a human being, curled in foetal position. Tentatively, I touched it, and I must have disturbed the seal the string had made. There was a gentle hiss.

  Clayton fell back, gasping, a hand to his mouth. I managed to choke: ‘Ring the police.’ Then I slammed the lid shut and ran for the corner of the forecourt, and was very sick.

  When I felt well enough to search him out, he was in the small cubby-hole behind the cash desk, which the two cashiers used as a retreat for their breaks. There was a table and three wooden chairs in there (I recognised them as old ones from the main office upstairs) and a coffee machine on the wall. I paid for two plastic cups of it. He was sitting at the table with his head in his hands, moaning: ‘Tessa, Tessa,’ to himself.

  I slid the cup under his nose and told him to drink that, and: ‘Who’s Tessa?’

  ‘My wife.’ He lifted his harrowed face. ‘My wife!’ he repeated frantically.

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool. She’s only been missing a week, and that – out there – God knows how long...’

  His mouth writhed. ‘You’re sure?’

  I couldn’t be sure of anything, but I made myself sound sure. ‘That thing must’ve been there months.’

  It certainly hadn’t been there on November 16th, sixteen months before, when I’d left the car behind. At that time, Clayton and I had both gone out of circulation. That thought seemed to occur to him. His thoughts were always selfish. Fractionally he brightened, reaching for his cup, sipping it, looking up.

  ‘You put sugar in it.’

  ‘Sorry. You on a diet?’

  ‘Prison food. You know.’

  ‘I can guess.’

  Then we stared at each other, aware that we were talking round what we didn’t want to face.

  ‘Then who d’you think it could be?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Let’s just wait, shall we.’

  At that moment a police patrol car drew on to the forecourt and two uniformed officers stepped out, eyes seeking and probing in all directions. By the time I’d got out to meet them, a grey Renault drove in from the other direction, doing a skid stop. Two more men, in casual clothes. One of them I knew, having had various dealings with the local CID on minor fraud cases. Sergeant Bill Porter, solid and humourless and unflappable. He had been the one to visit me, officially, several times at the convalescent home. It was to him I naturally turned.

  ‘It’s in there, Bill.’

  I pointed at the boot of the Volvo. He nodded. No greeting. He went and lifted the boot lid, stared, prodded gently, and stepped back, slamming it again. Then he had a few words with his mate, who returned to the Renault and began to talk on his radio, and to the two uniformed men, who began to remove no-go signs from the back of the Rover.

  ‘I’ll need to speak to the boss,’ said Porter. ‘Know where he is?’

  I jerked a thumb. ‘He’s in there.’

  ‘Will you dig him out for me – I’d better stay here.’

  I nodded, and turned on my heel. Clayton was slumped over the coffee cup, which was now the centre of his universe. I told him he was wanted outside. He shook his head, I thought at first in refusal, but he began levering himself to his feet.

  ‘You know what they’ll think. It’ll have to be me.’ He’d said it in despair. Then he stared at me belligerently. ‘Once you’ve been inside...’

  ‘Don’t start on that again, and for God’s sake try to get a hold on yourself. We know nothing yet. Nothing. Come on, he’s waiting.’

  But not with impatience. Sergeant Porter was smoking placidly. He turned as we approached, and if he recognised Clayton – he’d surely have done so – there was no sign of it.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to be causing you some trouble, sir,’ he said. ‘There’ll be some big brass around, and this area’s going to be cordoned off. It’ll be inconvenient, I know. But it can’t be helped. Sorry.’

  Clayton flapped a bit, not sure what his attitude was supposed to be, then he wandered away to watch what the uniformed men were doing, checking how many pumps could now be operated, and went to tell his staff what it was all about. He was back in business.

  ‘What d’you know about this, Cliff?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘It’s my car. It’s been stored here since the assault...’ He nodded. ‘I came to pick it up. They’d got it ready for the road. I found that in the boot.’

  ‘The car’s been here...how long?’

  ‘Sixteen months.’

  ‘Hmm! A bit of unpleasant work for the pathologist, then. I’ll be talking to you later. Hang around.’ He nodded. I wandered away.

  He’d sounded friendly, but I didn’t know how long that would last. I went to fin
d Clayton.

  There was an uneasy silence in the repair section at the back. The corrugated walls were not ringing with activity. I found the four men in a corner, gathered around Clayton, who was telling them what had happened to the best of his knowledge.

  This was the first time I’d got a good look at them without their face masks and the right way up. I didn’t recognise one of them, then wondered why I should expect to. Clayton saw me watching and thrust his way through the group, coming over to seize my arm.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing yet. Try to relax, can’t you. Are these the men who were here the day I came...’

  ‘Have we got to talk about that, with this happening?’

  ‘Seems a good time. We’ll be stuck here for hours. Were they?’

  ‘You know damn well they weren’t.’ He was walking away from me, not so much impatient as uninterested.

  ‘Heh!’ I called after him. He’d gone out the back and I caught him at the foot of the outside staircase. ‘Don’t come that with me,’ I said, tugging at the tail of his jacket. ‘There were three, that day. Let’s have their names.’

  Looking down and back at me, he seemed suddenly confident, and his memory of it angered him.

  ‘Don’t think you can stir that up again. You’ll never find ‘em now, anyway, and they wouldn’t talk to you, any more than they did then. Trying to make ‘em admit...whatever it was you were after, and God knows what that was.’

  I let him go, and he stamped on up. I stared after him, remembering how I’d climbed those stairs that day, wearily and dispiritedly because I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere, knowing it’d be so much easier all round to tear up the four statements and pretend I’d never seen Clayton’s team...

  Four statements! I ran up and burst into the office. He was standing at the window, hands on his hips, staring out at nothing.

  ‘How many were there?’ I demanded.

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘Men, that day, in the working bay. I said three, and you didn’t contradict me. Was it three?’

  ‘Three men,’ he said savagely, not turning to look at me. ‘All working on their own jobs and minding their own business.’

  Yet the number four had come into my mind. Tear up four statements, I’d thought, and it’d come without prompting.

  ‘Yet there were four statements,’ I said quietly, to myself, really, but he pounced on the words, whirling on me.

  ‘That was it, wasn’t it! That was what it was all about. Making out there’d been an accident, going on and on about it. What accident? What bloody accident, that’s what I want to know!’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take it easy. If you went on like that, it’s no wonder we finished up shouting at each other.’

  He raised his shoulders, slapped his hands against his thighs, and flopped down into his chair.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Now...if I came here about an accident, and you said there wasn’t one, then I’d get statements all round, then go back to the person who’d said there was, and have another go. It’s not something I’d go wild about and upset everybody. If the worst came to the worst, I’d arrange a confrontation. Somebody says he’s had an accident here, and you say there wasn’t, then the thing to do is get you face to face...’

  ‘What the devil are you talking about?’ he asked wearily, looking at me as though I was insane.

  ‘You said there hadn’t been an accident...’

  ‘Of course there’re accidents. We get ‘em all the time. But not your accident. Not the one you were chuntering about. And how could we come face to face, as you say? You daft or something? The poor bugger was dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Why else did you come round?’

  ‘I’d had...I don’t...a statement...’ I realised I was babbling, and shut my mouth firmly. There seemed no solidity in the room, none in my memory. I’d actually recalled the words of George Peters as he wrote them on his statement. Nothing less could have brought me to this place. And George Peters had been alive.

  ‘Well say it, say it,’ he demanded angrily. Clayton was the sort of man who can spot an uncertainty or weakness in a flash, and not hesitate to take advantage. There was a sneering challenge in his voice.

  ‘Who had died?’ I asked carefully.

  Lifting his chin, he said: ‘A chap called Colin Rampton. Mean anything, does it?’ Now he was looking at me with one raised eyebrow, my sanity still in doubt.

  I shook my head. The name meant something, but it was too vague to capture.

  ‘Just one of the fellows who used the garage for their own purposes. They paid a small fee. Not employed by me. Get it? Do I make myself clear?’

  Oh yes, I got it. He was pressing in with his advantage because of my uncertainty, and had clearly brought up the nucleus of our difficulties that day. He’d been worried about his insurance position in the event of a damages claim.

  ‘This Colin Rampton...he’d been working on his own car, down in the repair shop?’

  ‘No fee from him, mind you. Worked for our accountant. You see, try proving he worked for me. Can’t have two jobs at the same time.’

  Then I had it. Of course, Colin Rampton had been Michael Orton’s assistant. I’d met him once or twice at Orton’s office.

  ‘Cut it out, Clayton,’ I said wearily. ‘So Rampton worked for Michael Orton. So he used the repair shop for free. Right? Can we go on from there?’

  He shrugged, and at last took his eyes from me, abruptly bored with baiting me. ‘This was ten days before you came around, making a nuisance of yourself. Who was working for who! As though that bloody mattered. The other three were regulars, but you had to...’

  ‘Was Charlie Graham one of the three?’ I suddenly wondered.

  ‘Yes. D’you want to hear this or not?’

  ‘Please,’ I said, acting meek.

  ‘This Rampton character wanted to do some work on his track rod ends...’

  ‘The steering ball joints?’ I asked that because that was what George Peters had called them in his statement.

  ‘I suppose, I suppose. But he wasn’t going to wait till the hydraulic lift was clear. Not him. Clever dick. Had to put it on a couple of jacks...’

  ‘Chocking the back wheels with bricks?’ George Peters had said that.

  ‘I suppose. I don’t know, do I!’

  ‘And this was Colin Rampton?’

  ‘Who else, for Chrissake! Will you listen. There he was, lying on his back right under the sump. The bleeding twit. And the whole bloody lot ran off the jacks.’

  ‘On its own?’

  ‘Of course on its own. How else...’

  ‘And killed him?’

  ‘With a ton of car on his chest, what d’you think!’

  ‘And did Charlie Graham see this?’

  ‘It was him you had the barney with.’

  ‘Did I? I wonder why.’

  ‘Mate, you ain’t the only one who’s wondering. Whatsa-matter with you, anyway? It’s straight enough. Didn’t come under my insurance cover.’

  I wasn’t hearing him any more. The accident was right, and it was wrong. Or rather, it was wrong when set against my memory of George Peters’ statement. Desperately, I tried again.

  ‘It was his chest?’

  ‘Lying underneath...’

  Not his arm?’

  ‘His damned chest. It was crushed. He was dead.’

  ‘I had a statement…’

  ‘From a dead man,’ he jeered.

  ‘From a man with a crushed arm. His statement. His accident. You just described it – apart from the other car.’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘Something nudged his car off the jacks. What else could that be but a car?’

  ‘There wasn’t any other car! You don’t know what you’re saying, that’s the trouble. Never did, if you ask me. You’re rambling.’

  ‘He was alive and he gave me a statement.’ No he didn’t – he made out a withdr
awal! my brain shouted.

  ‘Who? Who did, then? Tell me that.’

  I walked away from his restlessly. Strip it all clear of imagination, and my only item of reality was Charlie Graham. Dearly, now, I wished to meet him again. He was all I had to cling to.

  ‘You can’t say, can you!’ Clayton shouted. ‘You’re walking away from it.’

  I stopped at the door. I had been walking away. I stopped and looked back. One possibility...Was one of your men – that day, the day of the crushed chest – was one of them named George Peters?’

  His breath came out with a whoosh, and he nearly strangled himself fighting to recover it. ‘George...’ he gasped.

  Was he working in the repair bay when Colin Rampton had his chest crushed?’

  ‘What! Him!’ He had control of himself, but his eyes glinted before they slid away. ‘George do any work! That’s a laugh.’ He tried to laugh, but it was only a weak cough. ‘You wouldn’t see him around here.’

  ‘You know him, then?’

  ‘Of course I damned well know him. He’s my stepson.’

  I still had my hand on the doorknob, and stood there like a fool, trying to make sense of it all. If George Peters didn’t work there, and if, in any event, he’d withdrawn his claim to Industrial injury Benefit, then I’d have had no reason to come round to Pool Street Motors. Yet an accident had happened here, just as described in his statement. If there had been a statement at all! My memory could have tossed it around, having recorded an accident from the time I heard about Colin Rampton’s death, and subconsciously associated a crushed arm with a crushed chest.

  The door opened against me. Sergeant Bill Porter looked down as my hand fell from the knob.

  ‘I wouldn’t go down there right now if I were you. They’re just taking him away.’

  This was Porter at his most casual, which meant he was intensely serious. I turned away at once. ‘There’s something?’ I asked.

  ‘The MO’s had a look at him, but he couldn’t give us much. You’ll understand, there’s been some deterioration, but there’s a skull fracture that seems to have been the cause of death. It was a young man in his twenties, say five feet seven, blond, all his own teeth. We’ll get more later, of course. One thing that helps, though. There’s a plaster cast on his right arm. It’d been broken. Mean anything, does it?’