Free A Death to Remember by Roger Ormerod Page B

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 If George Peters didn’t work there, and if, in any event, he’d withdrawn his claim to Industrial injury Benefit, then I’d have had no reason to come round to Pool Street Motors.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?’
    ‘ Oh sure,’ I heard myself say. The voice seemed to come from a distance. ‘We know him . Name’s George Peters. Clayton’s stepson, he says. Only they put the cast on the wrong place, ‘cause it was his chest that got it...got it...Then they put him in a black bag till I came round asking for him, but they didn’t know I’d lent him my p...pen, with the slopin’ nib...to do his statement, so they had to hide him in my car...as far as I know...as far as I remember...remember...’
    I heard Porter saying something about getting a chair quick, but everything was happening with intense clarity, and then, I suppose, I passed out. Nobody to blame but myself. I’d been warned. No stress, they’d said. Well all right, so I’d just give it a little rest...

 
    5
     
    I was sitting in one of the plastic chairs, Porter’s face close and concerned. The clarity was still with me. His concern was genuine, though to reach it I had to examine every fleck in his eyes, every shade in the wrinkles round them. I had not thought of him as old, and perhaps it was weariness that channelled the lines from mouth to chin. His lips were dry, chapped, as though he’d been out in a chill wind. His ears were red, I saw. Colours were particularly bright. His tie was a piercing green.
    Somewhere in the background Clayton was saying, over and over: ‘I don’t know what happened...what happened...’
    ‘ I’m all right,’ I said to Porter’s face, but no flicker of expression eased his anxiety, so perhaps it had not been aloud. ‘I’m all right.’ This was a great effort, and I felt my lips moving.
    Then Porter sighed, and he stood back. ‘You gave me a right turn. What was it?’
    How could I explain that for a moment my mind had flown away? Clayton was offering me a glass of water and I took it, to put off the explanations, the rim chattering against my teeth.
    ‘ I could get a doctor,’ Clayton said, moving about in distress, his own face harrowed, but probably because the body could be that of his stepson, I decided.
    I realised that my brain was working again. I’d captured a thought and held it. Porter was considering me soberly, and I felt that some understanding passed between us.
    ‘ No,’ he decided. ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary.’ Then he turned to Clayton. ‘Was it true, what he said? That it could be your stepson, George Peters?’
    Clayton ran his hands in agitation over his hair, then made a series of gestures of vague dismissal. But he considered the possibility seriously.
    ‘ My wife’s lad,’ he said. ‘George.