A Death to Remember (5 page)

She
reached over and drew open the second drawer down of her desk, and came up with a large manilla envelope, fastened with a metal clip. She held it out to me.

‘
Your personal stuff from the briefcase, and a few oddments from the drawers. Maybe they’ll help. You know, the memory.’

And
in her eyes I saw she understood that this was the critical point. Not the money, not the visit to Pool Street Motors that day, not the disappearance of Clayton’s wife, but my memory. It was my mind we were talking about, and that was where I lived.

3

I slid it all out on to the surface of her desk, as she thrust her files aside to make room. It seemed a natural thing, to share it with her.

What
there was to share. It didn’t look much.

From
the briefcase had come my pocket calculator, which in practice I’d rarely used because I had the sort of mind that did mental arithmetic just as fast. Had had, rather. I hadn’t dared to try it out lately. The calculator battery was dead. Perhaps my mental arithmetic was, too. There was my bit of card on which I’d copied the warnings I might have to give, from the Judge’s Rules on evidence. There was my fountain pen, my gold Parker with the oblique nib.

‘
My wife gave me that,’ I said, showing Nicola the engraved initials, C.W.S., on the side. ‘For my birthday.’

‘
Looks like a souvenir from a Co-op convention,’ she remarked. ‘What’s the W?’

‘
Wilfred.’

‘
Ah.’ She nodded.

And
my wallet. I’d wondered where that had got to. There was my credit card, now out of date, and three Access counterfoils, some private addresses on a bit of paper, and tucked in a pocket a couple of spare keys for the car. No money. That would have been formally, and via a lot of red tape, sent on to my aunt.

I
fingered the rest, the loose stuff from the drawers. Old erasers, a few pencils, a six-inch steel rule, and a folded sheet of paper. I opened it out. It was one of the record sheets that we had to complete every week to show what work had been done. It was my last one, uncompleted.

‘
Hello,’ I said. ‘This looks interesting. Didn’t it occur to anybody that...’

‘
Of course it did,’ she cut in. ‘It was the first thing we looked at.

It
was my rough copy, from which I’d have made a fair copy if I’d been around to do it. The idea was that you listed the files on hand at the beginning of the accounting week, adding files as they came in and signing out files as you cleared them. Lower down was a list of visits made, where to, file number involved, and when completed. From this you could see the movement pattern of the files. From it, too, it would have been possible to decide which files I’d had with me that day, and from that, decide why I’d found it necessary to phone in to ask what we had on Pool Street Motors, and why, without a case file to send me, I had gone round there and spent half the day, finally impounding records and apparently walking away with nearly six hundred pounds in cash.

‘
From this...’ I began.

‘
From it, we decided you’d gone out on
that
file.’ She put a blunt forefinger on a specific file number. ‘But it got us nowhere.’

‘
You’re sure?’ I looked up into her face.

‘
I’m very sure.’

‘
You wouldn’t care to dig it out, so that I can see?’

She
pouted, then smiled. ‘If it’ll help.’ Then she was out of the door and clattering along to Contributions Section.

I
sat and stared at my work sheet. I’d had seven files on hand that morning, but clearly I’d only taken out the one. George Peters. That was the name on the file. It was an individual file, not a business. No apparent connection with Pool Street Motors. Nicola wouldn’t have been so certain about it unless they’d found the other six back here in the office. But on that morning, apparently visiting George Peters, I must have come across something that had required a visit to Pool Street Motors. So I’d phoned in, just in case there’d been trouble in the past with them, and then gone along there. So far, straightforward.

Nicola
’s briefcase stood beside her chair. It had been my briefcase; I recognised its patches of wear and tear. We used the official black case with the gold ERR on it. I couldn’t remember even carrying it that day.

She
returned, banging in through the door with enthusiasm. ‘Here it is. In the PA run.’

A
cleared file, put away. George Peters, 17C Rock Street. I didn’t at once open it, but called from my memory a picture of Rock Street, a dreary run of dying terraces, either boarded emptily or broken into bed-sitters. But there was no memory of a visit there. I opened it.

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
bossy woman, if you gave her the chance, I thought.