Plender (15 page)

“But why did you do it?”

I spread my hands.

“Look,” I said, “what could I do? I came back and took the car and left it round the back of my digs for the night. So before I went in I checked the doors, because you never know, and naturally I checked the boot as well. And the boot was open.”

“Open? But I’d made sure I’d locked it?”

“Can’t have done, mate.”

“But I did. My wife—I tried it.”

I looked at him.

“Your wife,” I said. “She’s not . . .”

He shook his head.

“I had to tell her about the car. She went and had a look, that’s all.”

“And she tried the boot.”

He nodded.

“Well,” I said, “it must have been jammed. Because it opened easy enough when I got it home.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Lucky it wasn’t locked,” I said. “Otherwise it might have been Cyril down at the garage opened it first instead of me.”

He drank some of his drink.

“So,” I said. “I opened the boot.”

I looked at him for a while but he didn’t look at me and he didn’t say anything.

“What happened?” I said. “That little bang we had screw things up for you?”

He took out a cigarette. I lit it for him.

“Where were you going? The river?”

He closed his eyes and nodded. I shook my head.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” I said.

“Tell me,” he said. “What did you do?”

“What you were going to do, only better.”

“Why?”

“What else could I do? Go to the Law and tell them my old mate’s been driving around with a dead girl in the back of his car? Do you think I was going to do that? Put an old mate on the spot? Or maybe I should have phoned you up and told you to come and move her yourself. And supposing I had gone to the police? There’s some right bastards down there these days. They might have decided to see how much mileage they could get out of me, as well as out of you. I’m not exactly a blue-eyed boy down there.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Look,” I said. “Why don’t you do as I say—forget it. There’s nothing to worry about.”

He looked into my face.

“What did you do with her?”

Wearily, I closed my eyes.

“I’ve told you. She’s safe. And so are you.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?”

“I have to know.”

“That’s the last thing you have to do. What you have to do is forget all about last night and behave normally and live the way you normally live and everything will be fine.”

“How can I?” he said. “I’ve killed somebody.”

His voice was hoarse and low, a controlled scream.

“I thought you said it was an accident?”

“It was. But it was my fault.”

I could see that tears were about to appear so I said, “Nothing’s your fault if nobody knows anything about it. And nobody knows anything about it.”

“You know,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Luckily for you.”

He moved his glass as if to drink but it was empty again. I made some more signs at the barman and got some more drinks. When the barman had gone away I lifted my glass and said, “So, anyway, here’s to us. To the Old Boys’ Reunion. Remember the motto? ‘Keep Faith’.”

Knott downed his drink in one go. I began to hum the school song, and eventually the long-forgotten words began to break through into the front of my mind.

By Hunter’s Green Banks, away from city strife,

Two words we learn that we shall carry through life,

Keep Faith in all you do, these words will stand us true,

On future morrows as the do, here today ...

I grinned at Knott.

“Remember?” I said. “Old Price wrote the words and the Boss wrote the music. Remember old Price? He wasn’t half mad that time Mouncey and his crowd put their own words to the song that speech day. ‘Get stuffed and the same to you’ they sang, do you remember? They all got carpeted. Still, Price was all right, really. The only half-bloody-decent bloke in the whole place. English and History. They were the only two lessons I used to enjoy. He used to make them interesting. I remember he got us all interested in
Macbeth
by telling us the story as if it was like a gangster film. And he was always fair, not like those other bastards. In fact, the one thing he couldn’t stand was a cheat.”

I took a drink.

“Mind you, I almost dropped you right in it with him over the Essay Prize. Do you remember? The prize for the best piece in the school magazine? It was a toss-up between me and you. I did a story about a man who lost his memory and you did that thing about the soldier ants eating up this bloke’s plantation in South America. Only you’d happened to lend me the Boy’s Own Paper with the same story in it a couple of months before. I suppose you must have forgotten. And then Mallett awarded you the prize. I could have dropped you right in it,” I said. “But I didn’t.”

KNOTT

I drove the Mercedes across the city. Plender looked at his watch.

“I hope you don’t mind dropping me off like this,” he said. “I really should have grabbed a cab. I mean, it’s right out of your way.”

I didn’t say anything. I just clutched the steering wheel and stared straight ahead beyond the raindrops on the windscreen.

“I really do feel bad about it,” he said.

“It’s all right,” I said, hoping to shut him up. The words came out of me all run together, sounding like one word.

Plender began to sing again, quietly, as he looked out of the side window:

Dull clouds may rise,

To dim the sunlit skies

Memories like birds

Will fly back homewards again

Then we shall recall

And still feel proud to say

Keep Faith in all you do,

These words will stand as true

On future morrows, as they do, here today.

When he’d finished the words a second time, he went back to the beginning and began to whistle the tune through again.

“Where abouts did you say?” I said.

Plender looked at his watch again.

“Well, actually,” he said, “I wonder if you’d mind doing me a favour? I didn’t realise just what the time was.”

I slowed down to approach some traffic lights.

“Thing is, I have to meet somebody. Only take a minute or two. I wonder if you’d mind waiting?”

I stopped the car at the lights.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Do you know Sammy’s Point?”

I nodded. Sammy’s Point was an acre or so of wasteland in the centre of the dockland, jutting out into the river near to where the Ferry berthed. It was a favourite spot for car-parked families on summer Sunday afternoons.

Neither of us said anything else. I turned right at the lights and drove through the city centre and turned down one of the cobbled streets that led to the riverside. The road opened out on to the broad forecourt in front of the Ferry Pier. A small queue of people was standing by the ticket collector’s box waiting for the collector to lift the chain so that they could walk down the gangway and board the last ferry.

“I should park outside the Tivoli,” said Plender.

The Tivoli Tavern. Last stop on a Saturday night for the boozers who had to get the last boat home. I stopped the car outside and the light from the multi-coloured windows speckled the inside of the car. Plender put his hand in his coat pocket and took out a flask and unscrewed the drinking cup and filled it and offered it to me, taking his own drink directly from the neck of the flask. I took the cap from him and downed the drink in one go.

“We’ve had a few in there, at one time or another,” said Plender. “Tanking up before the last boat.”

Plender took the cap away from me and refilled it and handed it back to me. I took it because I didn’t want to stop drinking; I felt as if I never wanted to be sober again. To be sober would be to see too clearly the events of the last two days, and to see too clearly would be unbearable.

The ticket collector finally lifted the chain and the queue of people began to file down the gangway towards the waiting ferry. Plender looked at his watch and briefly scanned the forecourt. Two youths clattered across the cobblestones towards the gangway.

“You’re quiet, Peter,” said Plender.

I stared straight ahead of me.

“Stop thinking about it,” he said.

“What do you want?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just to be . . . ah, there he is. Right on time.”

A man in a raincoat was walking across the cobblestones towards Sammy’s Point.

“Come on,” said Plender.

Plender got out of the car. I didn’t move. Plender stopped in front of the car and looked at me. He inclined his head and turned away and began to stroll off towards Sammy’s Point. Why didn’t I just drive away and leave him? There was nothing he could do. Except telephone the police and tell them where the body was. And then I’d tell them what he’d done, what had happened—I wanted to be sick. What would it matter then? The police would have
me
. It would be me they’d lock up for half a dozen years. Christ. I would be beyond caring what happened to Plender.

I got out of the car and found myself trailing after Plender. Plender kept on walking and eventually disappeared into the darkness of Sammy’s Point. Bells rang and the Ferry began to churn away from the pier. I followed Plender into the darkness and then stopped. Lank grass fell softly over my feet. As the Ferry passed by Sammy’s Point before it began its outward curve towards the other side, the lights from its portholes illuminated the bulwarks at the edge of the grass. Plender was standing at the edge, talking to the man, smoking, looking amiable and relaxed. The man in the raincoat passed Plender something and Plender put whatever it was in his coat pocket and then the Ferry slid away and everything was dark again. I watched the lights of the Ferry grow smaller in the darkness and I wished I was on board and seventeen again and on my way home to my mother and one of her big suppers. Tears welled up in my eyes and then I heard voices and a few seconds later Plender and the man emerged from the blackness, talking in low voices. The man in the raincoat didn’t look very happy, but Plender was still relaxed and smiling his quiet smile. Then there was a movement behind me and I began to turn to see what it was but before I could do that two men brushed past me, one either side, and walked towards Plender and the man. Plender stepped back slightly, his expression not changing. One of the two men took hold of the arms of the man in the raincoat and pinned them behind his back in a wrestler’s grip. The other man hit the man in the raincoat in the stomach, twice. The man in the raincoat was released and he fell to the ground, vomiting. Plender looked down at him and said, “That’s what happens if you’re late. It hurts, but it only happens once. Next time there won’t be anything like this. The stuff goes straight to your wife. Or even to your kid, on her way home from school. Someone walks by her and puts some pictures in her hand. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

The man on the ground crawled his knees up to his chest and tried to draw his breath back into his body. Plender looked at him for a moment then stepped round him and began to stroll towards me. The other two men fell in behind him, lighting up cigarettes as they walked. It had all happened as if I hadn’t been there, as if I hadn’t seen anything. Plender approached me as if nothing extraordinary had happened, and the two men just ignored me.

As Plender drew level with me he said to the two men, “Come on, lads, I’ll buy you a drink.”

He winked at me and I found myself falling into step with him.

“You do all kinds of business in my kind of business,” said Plender.

The forecourt was completely deserted now. A soft drizzle had begun to drift down from the sky, wafting like thin smoke past the lights of the public convenience and the Tivoli Tavern. The pier was dark and quiet and there was no sign of the ticket collector. Our footsteps echoed in the emptiness.

A part of me wanted to run to my car and leave this present too precise unreality behind me, but another part of my mind, the part that contained the reasons for my presence, made me stay, made me wait like an actor waiting for direction.

At the Tavern, one of the two men overtook Plender and myself and pushed open the door for us. Plender went in first and walked over to the bar.

Now that the Ferry had gone, the Tivoli was quiet. Only a few dockland regulars were left in the bar. A small fire burned in the grate and the smell of sawdust was thick in the small room. Plender leant against the bar and faced the two men.

“What’s it to be, lads?”

“Guinness and Bitter,” said one.

“Rum and Black,” said the other.

“And two large scotches,” Plender said to the landlady. Plender turned back and said to me “Peter, let me introduce you. This is Col and this is Terry. We work together from time to time. Lads, this is Peter. Don’t worry about him. He’s one of us.”

PLENDER

I sat at my desk and drafted replies to Misters Harris, Codd, and Potter of Leeds, Doncaster and Barnsley respectively.

Dear________,

I was thrilled to receive your reply to my advertisement which I placed in last month’s
Friendly Magazine
. I imagine (if you are at all a like soul, as I know you are) that it was almost as difficult for you to reply as it was for me to advertise, especially as I didn’t want to give the impression of being the wrong kind of person. How lucky I was, therefore, to discover in you a correspondent that so obviously realises what kind of person I am. It’s wonderful to know that somewhere there is someone who understands. It was only through desperation that in fact I turned to
Friendly Magazine
as a last resort. But I’m sure I don’t have to explain, not to you.

Your letter filled me with excitement. I can hardly wait to meet you and put into practice all the wonderful things you suggested. I think your ideas for disciplining naughty girls are delightful. (Perhaps you will demonstrate them to me when we meet. From talking to my friends, I know that my own boss would have a more efficient office if he put a few of your ideas into practice!!!)

I enclose a photograph as you requested. It was taken by my girlfriend when we were on holiday at Filey Butlin’s last summer. As you can see, short skirts can be awkward when you’re roller skating!

If you would like us to meet, then you can phone me at the above telephone number after seven, any evening. I shall be waiting by the phone for your call!

When I’d done that I went through into the outer office and asked my secretary to give me the information she’d looked up concerning the new correspondents. Two of them looked promising so I filed the data in my filing cabinet and locked the drawer.

I sat down at my desk and buzzed for coffee. Outside the day was grey and wet wind buffeted the city. I sat and stared out of the window at the sky until my secretary brought in the coffee.

“Mr. Gurney’s on his way up,” she said. “Shall I send him in?”

I smiled. Gurney hated not having automatic access to my office. He always had to ask my secretary if I was available.

“Yes, all right,” I said. “And give him a cup and saucer on his way in.”

A few moments later Gurney came in.

“Good morning Mr. Plender,” he said.

“Have some coffee,” I said.

Gurney poured some coffee.

“Andrea and Len set up for tomorrow night?”

“Yes, Mr. Plender. Their place at eight. They’re meeting the clients in Peggy’s.

I took a sip of my coffee and nodded.

“Who’s taking the pictures? Harry or myself?” Gurney asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about that.”

KNOTT

I got to the studio early on Monday morning. I’d forgotten about the stains on the warehouse floor. I’d woken up at half past five, almost weeping with fear and anger at myself for not remembering. And then I’d had to lie there for another hour until I was sure my wife had gone back into a deep sleep because when I’d remembered, I’d sat bolt upright in bed and startled her awake.

I’d known I’d be too late. The warehouse men started at five. But I had to get there as early as possible, just to see.

I stepped through the small door and into the warehouse. The usual men gave me the usual greetings, laced with a few remarks about the hour of my appearance. I walked over to the stairs, looking for the spot and pretending not to be looking for anything. But there were no signs of any stains. Perhaps the cobbled floor was so old and porous that the blood had sunk into the stone, not leaving a trace.

But there’d been more than just blood. I walked up the stairs trying to imagine why. No trace. No marks. No hair. Nothing. It had been cleaned away. Sometimes the warehouse men hosed down the floor, but not today; the floor was bone dry.

I shuddered as the simile struck me.

I let myself into the studio, closed the door and walked through the reception area into the studio and over to the leather chair in the middle of the floor and sat down and tried to think, but the memories of Saturday night hung round the objects in the studio so then I tried not to think at all.

The objects.

I looked round the studio. It was all wrong. It wasn’t as I’d left it. It had been changed. Little things. The rug had been straightened. The divan had been folded up. The glasses were gone. The film . . . I stared at the coffee table. The spools of film weren’t there anymore. God. Where were they? I rushed over to the table as if my haste would make them miraculously reappear. I got down on all fours to see if they’d rolled under anything but there was nothing. I must have put them somewhere else. The changing room? But I hadn’t been in there, not afterwards. Look anyway. I ran into the changing room. The bed had been remade. I wanted to scream. I turned and hurried into the kitchen. The glasses were all washed and dried and neatly stacked on the drainer.

Now I knew I was mad.

I went back into the studio and opened the divan and lay down on it, drawing my knees up to my chest, pulling my coat tight around me.

I lay there until quarter to ten until Dave, my assistant, arrived.

He opened the door that led from the reception area and closed it behind him and stared at me.

“What the bloody hell’s up with you?” he said.

I slid my legs off the divan and stood up.

“Hangover,” I said. “I was out with an old school friend last night.”

Dave hung his coat up and nodded in understanding.

“Male or female?” he said.

“Male,” I said.

Dave walked past the divan and threw his newspaper on to the coffee table and went into the kitchen. I sat down again and picked up the paper and glanced through it, hoping my actions would ease my behaviour back into some semblance of normality.

I heard Dave fill the kettle.

“I expect you’d like some coffee,” he called.

“Yes, I would,” I said.

Dave leant against the doorway into the kitchen while he waited for the kettle to boil. He’d been out of the local Art School just under a year and he’d affected his generation’s dispassionate attitudes just like all the rest of them. To him, I was an old man.

“So it was a heavy night on the booze then, was it?”

I nodded.

“You should try smoking,” he said. “Leaves you fresh as a daisy next day.”

“Perhaps I should,” I said.

“Can’t understand it,” he said. “Alcohol’s a killer. Poison.”

The kettle began to whistle and Dave went back into the kitchen.

The headline read: GIRL, 17, MISSING FROM FLAT. It was at the bottom of the page, just a paragraph. The story described how Eileen’s landlady had got in touch with the police on Sunday evening after Eileen hadn’t returned since going out on Saturday night. Eileen was described as a secretary with Priestley and Squires, Advertising Agents.

Dave came out of the kitchen with the coffee. I folded up the paper and put it down next to me on the divan. Dave handed me my mug and picked up the paper.

“Sod all in this rag,” he said. “Don’t know why I buy it.”

Oh but there is, I wanted to say. There’s a little bit in it about me. Well, not about me, actually, but about the girl I killed on Saturday night. Well, I didn’t actually kill her, but it doesn’t make any difference now. I’m for the chop just the same. You’ll find it at the bottom of page three, the column at the end.

Dave threw the paper back on the coffee table.

“Anyway, what do you want me to do?” he said.

“What?”

“Do. Work. What’s on?”

“Oh. Work. The handbag shots. They’ve got to be done.”

“Terrific. Still, it’s better than doing prints all day long.”

He peeled off his lumberjacket. “Want me to start setting them up?”

“Yes,” I said.

Dave went to work setting up. I sat where I was, drinking my coffee, holding on to my cup as though it was a lifebelt.

“Anybody coming in this morning?” Dave asked, unrolling the huge expanse of backing paper.

“Coming in?” I said.

“Yeah. Any of the birds.”

“No,” I said. “We’ve no models booked in this morning.”

“Thank Christ. That’s one thing I can do without first thing on a Monday morning, a load of twittering dolly birds. They give me a pain in the bum. What about this afternoon?”

“Two,” I said. “Some nightwear shots to do.”

Dave laughed.

“That nightwear stuff kills me,” he said. “I don’t believe anybody wears gear like that anymore. It’s pure 1950s. I mean, imagine getting into bed with a bird togged up like that. It’d give you writer’s cramp.”

I drank some more coffee.

“Still, I suppose it appeals to the stocking tops and dirty macintosh brigade.”

I stood up.

“I should get a move on,” I said. “It’s all got to be clear for this afternoon.”

“Who’s coming, anyway?”

“Lyn and Suki.”

“Suki. Would you fucking well believe it. Suki from the Holden Road Estate. I tell you . . .”

The phone rang. I knew it was Plender. I went into the reception area. Angela, my receptionist, hadn’t arrived yet so I sat down on her desk and picked up the phone and said, “Peter Knott Associates.”

“Hello, Peter,” said Plender. “How’s things?”

“It’s in the paper,” I said.

“Of course it’s in the paper.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But nothing. It doesn’t say anything about you, does it? It doesn’t say anything about finding her, does it?”

“No, but . . .”

“And it won’t. So forget it, because it’s going to get much worse. It’ll be on the front page tomorrow. With a picture.”

“But how can you say they won’t find her; how can you say they won’t trace her to me?”

“I told you last night. The only way they’ll trace her to you is if you keep carrying on the way you are doing.”

“But somebody’s been here.”

“How do you mean?”

“Somebody’s been here over the weekend. Everything’s been tidied up. There’s some films missing.”

“I know,” said Plender.

“What?”

“I’ve got the films,” he said. “I did the tidying up.”

“But . . .”

“Listen, you may not be aware of this, but you were in a bit of a state on Saturday night. Panic stations all along the line. I thought you might have been a bit hasty so I looked up your studio in the phone book and had a wander round.”

“But I didn’t tell you where it… where I’d been.”

He sighed.

“No, you didn’t,” he said. “I know I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but then sometimes I don’t have to be.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“You had enough on your mind, what with one thing and another.”

“But I’ve been going mad. I haven’t known what to think.”

“Then don’t. I’ll do the thinking for you.”

I pressed my free hand against my face and screwed up my eyes tight shut.

“All right?” came Plender’s voice from the receiver.

I couldn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wondered if I could ask you a little favour?”

The door to the studio opened and my secretary came in.

I swivelled round on the desk so that I wouldn’t have to face her.

“Yes, fine,” I said, as though I was talking to a client. “What can I do?”

PLENDER

I walked into Peggy’s. It was almost seven thirty. It was more crowded than the last time I’d been there. Peggy wasn’t around at the moment but he had three barmen on to cope which was unusual for him because he was a tight-fisted old slag and that was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I bought my drink and shouldered my way through the cashmere sweaters and the tight pants and sat down in one of the booths. On the jukebox Harpers Bizarre were sighing their way through “Anything Goes.” And all the sherberts were creaming down their suspenders.

I drank my drink and waited.

Peggy appeared behind the bar and cast his eyes over the assembled throng. When he saw me he disappeared back where he’d come from and the next thing I knew he was sliding his big bottom into the bench seat on the other side of the booth.

“Hello, Peggy,” I said.

Peggy slipped the evening paper on to the table between us.

I looked at the paper and then I looked at Peggy.

“Look at the picture on the front,” Peggy said. “The dolly.”

I looked at the paper again and then gave Peggy a what-am-I-supposed-to-be-looking-at look.

“She was in here Saturday night.”

“I’m surprised you remember,” I said.

“Don’t shoot shit. I’m telling you, she was in here.”

“So?”

Peggy gave me a long look.

“Mr. Plender,” said Peggy. “We have a very nice relationship. You know enough about me and I know enough about you and that’s why you keep using this place and that’s why I keep letting you use it. So far everything’s worked out. But I want you to tell me something, Mr. Plender, just so’s I’ll know when the boys in blue troll by. Is she part of your scene or is she not? Because you were here when she was here and I don’t want the law linking your little scenes with my little scenes. That’s why I’m asking.”

I gave him a tired smile.

“Peggy,” I said, “Peggy. Do me a favour, will you?”

“Because if she is, and you’re not being straight with me, then I’m going to be in a lot of trouble. Some of those bitches are just dying to bust me.”

“I’ve told you,” I said. “Straight up. It’s nothing to do with me.”

He gave me another look.

“I hope to Christ you’re giving it me straight.”

“I am, and that’s a novelty in here, Peggy.”

“Because seeing her in here with that feller, and you being in here as well, well, you do see what I mean.”

“She was with a feller?”

“Of course she was with a feller,” he said. “You don’t think she’d come in here on her own, do you?”