A Death to Remember (20 page)

‘
Tell me,’ she said, nodding, not taking no for an answer, accepting it as humour but not smiling.

I
told her, in detail. Porter sat, heels hooked on the cross brace of the chair, chin cupped in his hand. I was well aware that he’d probably heard what I’d told Caldicott; that micro-phone on the desk might have led elsewhere than to the tape recorder. Maybe this was his friendly act, seeing whether my account now corresponded with my previous one. As far as I could make it, it did, though maybe now embroidered with more emotional arabesques.

Porter
stirred. ‘You were asked to go to 17C Rock Street? No hint of who’d be there?’

‘
Not a thing. I thought she was speaking about George.’

He
snorted. ‘We’ve been round to the room, and gone over it in detail. There was nothing, no sign at all that anybody had been there this evening.’

‘
There wouldn’t be.’

‘
Possibly not,’ he mused. ‘But if there had been, it was this person she was afraid of?’

‘
If it wasn’t my imagination.’

‘
So you believe that whoever it was got tired of waiting, and went to find her?’

‘
It’s not for me to believe anything.’

He
smiled thinly, and reached for his pack of cigarettes. ‘Isn’t it, Cliff? We’re not getting that message around here. You’ve done nothing but poke around...’

‘
My memory. That’s all I’m digging for.’

‘
Yes. This damned memory loss of yours. Don’t you think it’s causing too much trouble all round?’

I
looked at Nicola. She was big-eyed and solemn, and she gave me no encouragement. It was
my
memory, so I could do the talking.

I
sighed. ‘Look Bill, it wasn’t just the missing day. I could have lived with that, but there were other things, not so positive. It was like living in a vacuum. Kind of a personality problem. I
wanted
to bring it back, but didn’t feel like making the effort. But now it’s too late, and I’m right in the middle. I’m remembering parts of things, bits and pieces, and it doesn’t all come together and make sense. I can’t leave it now. It’s my bloody mind we’re talking about. I’ll go crazy if I can’t get the complete picture.’

Nicola
was nodding. It made sense to her. She had a proprietorial interest in my mind. If there’d been time, I might have worried about that, but Bill Porter picked me up on what I’d said, and carried it on.

‘
So...what have you found out about the day of your assault?’

‘
Fact...or guess?’

‘
Both. See what we get out of it.’

I
felt I’d have liked notice of the question, time to marshal a few thoughts and reject a few. Nicola didn’t give me much chance.

‘
He went out on an Industrial Accident claim – George Peters – and got a statement from him...’ She let it hang there, her eyes on me, eyebrows raised.

‘
I’m sure, now, that I got a statement,’ I said. ‘There’s a withdrawal on the file, but I took a statement from him. He’d crushed his right arm, and described how a car had run off its jacks and collapsed on him. This was at Pool Street Motors. I went there. That’s fact. Then my memory’s vague, though there’s something about a barney I had with a chap called Charlie Graham. I can’t understand that. But I do know that at one time I had four statements. There were three men there, in that repair bay, so it seems to confirm that I’d already had a statement from George Peters. I don’t know what sort of statements, though. I mean...I seem to have walked into a situation where George Peters’ accident fitted almost exactly the circumstances of a fatal accident to a chap called Colin Rampton. As described by George Peters, who must have seen it. But in any event, my enquiries that day couldn’t have involved money.’

‘
Ah yes.’ Bill nodded, gazing at his toes. ‘I get your point.’

‘
If I’d stuck to the accident question, then money wouldn’t have been mentioned.’

‘
And so the money in the envelope could well have been intended for George Peters,’ put in Nicola with triumph.

Porter
raised his head and looked from one to the other of us. ‘So what d’you think was going on, Cliff?’

‘
I think George Peters had some sort of accident, about ten days before my visit there, and got himself a crushed arm. On the same evening, I believe Colin Rampton died when a car fell on his chest, at the garage.’

He
held up his hand. ‘November the 6th,’ he said. ‘
That
was the evening Colin Rampton died. I’ve been checking records. On that same evening a police patrol car was chasing a Maestro, twenty miles from here, which turned out to be stolen, and which’d run through some traffic lights. They lost it, but it crashed and turned over. Before they could reach it, the driver managed to get out and did a bunk over the fields. Inside the car there was a package containing heroin. Take it from there.’

I
felt an upsurge of excitement. This was what I’d wanted. ‘I see what you mean. Tessa Clayton spoke about George having lost a consignment, and that was probably it. I suppose he’d have to pay for it, and she got the money together. Then, on the day I went there...’

‘
Hold it,’ said Nicola. ‘You’re jumping the gun. That evening, the evening of the accident...I can see what happened, if you can’t.’

‘
Oh, I see, I see,’ I calmed her. ‘Poor George, arm in a mess and knowing the police would be looking for hospital reports...managed to get back to town, here. He was in trouble, so he’d head for his friend Charlie Graham, who was working at the garage. About five-thirty to six, that’d be.’

‘
We can tie it down,’ said Bill Porter placidly. ‘Colin Rampton died at five-twenty.’

‘
Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Where was I? Oh yes. Five o’clockish, George Peters got to the garage. He’d got to be careful because he wasn’t too well-in with Tony Clayton. So he crept round the back, and it was there he saw the car fall on Colin Rampton. Then there’d be a lot of fuss and bother, and he’d have to make himself scarce, with ambulances and policemen on their way. So now he simply
had
to go to a hospital, but at least he’d got an acceptable story to tell about how his arm had been crushed. And once having told it there, I suppose he reckoned he’d better tell it to me, too. An exact description of the death of Colin Rampton.’

‘
Hmm!’ said Bill. ‘You’ve given this some thought.’

‘
Yes. I had to try to make logic out of it.’

He
smiled thinly, robbing his words of intended insult. ‘As you seem to have done with Tessa Clayton tonight. Made logic of it.’

I
felt the warmth flooding into my face. ‘It was the phone number. I couldn’t remember the phone number.’

Nicola
silenced me with a frown. She turned to Porter and tapped him on the knee reprovingly. ‘That wasn’t fair. Cliff’s making sense.’

‘
Of a kind. All right, Cliff, so you went along there ten days later and started asking questions...’

‘
About the accident. But of course, it didn’t fit. Arm for a chest, and the wrong person. And maybe Charlie Graham didn’t like the questions I was asking, because I was talking about his friend...’

Bill
Porter was shaking his head. ‘Not a friend. We don’t think so. George Peters was a heroin user himself, but he must have been a pusher, too. Or maybe a courier. It’s how they finance their own habits. Peters had probably picked up a consignment of heroin, and was taking it to his supplier, and lost it. There’s a point, there, by the way. Six hundred quid in that envelope, that’s not much for what you’d call a consignment. The stuff they found in the car would have fetched forty to fifty thousand on the streets. Think of it in those terms, and George would’ve been in deep trouble that end, and Graham would also have been in trouble, not being able to get
his
supply. So, by the time you went there he could’ve been half crazy with withdrawal symptoms.’

‘
How the hell you can talk about it so calmly...’

‘
Or I go insane,’ he said. ‘As simple as that.’

‘
All right. I guess you know your own position. In any event, I took statements, and it seems nothing would fit right. So the obvious thing would’ve been to get back to George Peters and check with him. No great problem there. But somewhere along the line...have you thought of this, Bill? George owed around six hundred quid. His adoring mother had got it together for him. But I’d been there all afternoon, and delayed things.
She
had been intending to make the phone call, but because of me she wasn’t able to. So she got me alone. Somehow, she persuaded me to phone that call box and hand over the money to George, wherever he wanted us to meet. At that time the money was in an envelope in a drawer in the main office. She arranged...and like an utter fool I must’ve agreed...that we’d go up there and I’d say I had to take the books away with me, and she’d put the envelope in the wages book. You see...I can remember
seeing
her do that, but somehow Clayton realised, and went after me...’

‘
And there you’re stuck,’ said Bill, with apparent satisfaction.

‘
No he’s not,’ said Nicola, looking at me in expectation.

‘
Yes I am,’ I told her.

Bill
laughed. ‘You see, he knows. It doesn’t fall together. Assuming he went back to the office...’

‘
I did that sure enough.’

‘
...with the intention of phoning the number, which turns out to be a phone box convenient for George Peters, then how was George Peters
at
the office when Cliff arrived?’

‘
I’ve worried about that.’

‘
And why should violence be necessary, if Cliff intended to hand it over peacefully?’

‘
I did. I would have done, I suppose.’

‘
And if Tony Clayton followed you to your office, just to get the money back, why should
he
resort to violence? You’d have handed it over as meek as a lamb.’

‘
As a lamb,’ I agreed.

‘
And what happened to the statements you say you took?’

‘
Ah!’

‘
If
you took them.’

‘
I seem to remember...’

‘
Seem to?
Did
you? Can you actually
say
you did?’

‘
I got a flash of memory – four statements.’

‘
And yet you can’t even prove you took one from Peters...’ He held up his hand. ‘Listen, damn you. All right, you can say there was no reason to have gone to the garage if you hadn’t had a statement from Peters in the first place. That may or may not be true. But what there was –
is
– on the file is a withdrawal of his claim. In other words, a withdrawal of any story Peters might have told you.’

‘
I remember a statement, damn it.’

‘
Your memory! And how reliable is that, Cliff?’

‘
In this instance, totally.’

‘
That’s a confident claim. Right. Accept you had a statement. No sign of it, mind you. But accept it. Accept you took it round to the garage. Accept you left there with that statement, plus three others, an envelope of money, and something or other with a phone number written on it.’

‘
You’re accepting all that?’

‘
Please listen, Cliff. No point in being sarcastic.’

‘
What d’you expect?’ Nicola demanded. ‘Accept this, accept that. What the hell’re you getting at, Sergeant?’

‘
It’s all right, Nicola,’ I said, trying to cool the atmosphere.

‘
It’s
not
all right. You just won’t...’ She stopped. Her hand fluttered to her lips, and she shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘
Let’s hear what he’s got to say. Huh?’

Porter
grimaced. ‘It’s not a question of theories, you see, fancy stuff based on flashes of memory. It’s what we’ve
got
. And that is that you were found unconscious, Clayton standing over you with the money in his pocket, and no statements, no phone number, but a withdrawal was in the file for George Peters. Clayton wouldn’t have had time to get rid of those statements...so what’s the answer?’

‘
That,’ I said, ‘is what I’d like to know.’

‘B
ut would you, Cliff? What if you don’t like the answer?’