Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

I knew why I’d been unable to go outside to meet Samuel. It was because he’d chosen the wrong place for the meeting, a place flooded with history and demands for remembrance. It symbolised what he wanted of me. I’d seen it all too clearly as he had stood and read the inscriptions on the plaques recalling the death of Edward Wightman.

Some people desperately want to remember. It can become the most important thing in their lives, that search for the past. But I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t want memories. I didn’t want to remember any of it. All I wanted was to get on with my life and think about the future. I reckoned that was pretty reasonable, a perfectly rational ambition.

So I stayed in my seat and I kept watching the old man until I lost sight of him in the darkness.

For a moment, the world around me seemed suddenly empty. The pub, the other customers, the glass in front of me — they’d ceased to mean anything. Even the street outside the window looked unnaturally dark and deserted. There were still a few people passing by, wandering in and out of the lights, but they were all strangers.

I jumped up from the table, scraping the legs of my chair on the floor, and ran out of the door into Conduit Street, irrationally afraid that I’d left it too late.

At the corner, I stopped. There was no sign of the bent and weary figure I expected to see. A pedestrianised stretch of Bore Street ran down towards The Friary, while ahead of me was the Baker’s Lane entrance to the Three Spires shopping centre. I looked at the row of benches located for people to rest on. Instinct told me that Samuel would have chosen that route, then turned into the arcade halfway along Baker’s Lane.

But when I emerged at the end of the arcade and found myself outside the shopping centre again, I realised he’d evaded me. I was too late after all.

I stood for a few moments by the ugly, flat-roofed Civic Hall, which lay in darkness that evening. A dense clump of trees separated Castle Dyke from the bus station, and the area was silent, but for the hum of traffic on Birmingham Road. The overwhelming feeling of isolation made me reluctant to go any further.

Then I was startled by a sudden noise. It was a loud, racking cough, brought up from deep within the lungs of someone standing out of sight. I knew I wasn’t alone. Now I was scared.

Quickly, I turned away to go back to the lights of the shopping centre. Behind me, a car engine revved until it screamed, tyres squealed on tarmac, someone shouted indistinguishably. I caught a glimpse of tail lights vanishing up Frog Lane.

On the way back to the marketplace, I heard the wail of a siren passing through the city, somewhere beyond the Three Spires. The sound echoed across the medieval streets — a shaft of howling modernity striking through the stifling grey blanket of history.

And first thing next morning, the police arrived on my doorstep.

There were two of them, just the way you always expect. Detective Sergeant Graham was slim, with a narrow, worried face. He had greying hair and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow, but a vigilant look in his eyes. He wore a leather jacket and fawn chinos with a black belt. The female officer at his side was Detective Constable Hanlon, looking broad-shouldered in a padded jacket and a pair of jeans, with her fair hair scraped back off her forehead and a direct gaze that was probably meant to be disconcerting.

They turned up on the doorstep at nine o’clock. I’d only been up a few minutes, and I was still feeling groggy from lack of coffee. After they’d shown me their warrant cards, I let them into the house. As people must often do, I was wondering what I’d done wrong. In my case, drinking and driving invariably flashed through my mind when I saw a policeman, even when I hadn’t been drinking. What else could it be? Was my tax disc out of date? Quite possibly. I couldn’t remember.

But no. I had enough sense to know that two detectives wouldn’t visit me at home for something so trivial. I had a panicky moment when I tried to recall what might be lying around the house that I wouldn’t want them to see. A few weeks before, I’d stupidly invited back some people I met in the Stowe Arms, and one of them had passed round a joint. Could traces of it linger so long? There might also be a pornographic magazine lurking somewhere. But it was too late to worry about it now.

As I took them into my sitting room, my last thought was that their visit might be related to the road protest at Hilton. Had I been reported for trespassing perhaps? Had I seen something I shouldn’t?

But in the next second, all my speculations went out of the window.

‘Mr Buckley, we understand that you’re acquainted with a Mr Samuel Longden.’

‘Good God.’

‘Sorry?’ DS Graham looked intrigued at the reaction.

‘I mean — yes, I am. It was a bit of a surprise, you mentioning his name.’

‘What else did you think we’d come about?’ asked DC Hanlon smartly. She thrust her hands aggressively into her jacket pockets as if she had two hidden revolvers pointing directly at my groin.

‘Hanlon thinks everyone has a guilty secret,’ said Graham, with a smile.

‘It’s just such a short time since I first heard his name,’ I said.

Graham cocked his head. ‘Perhaps we’ll come back to that in a moment, sir.’

He said it like a threat. And I wasn’t fooled for a minute by that word ‘sir’. There’s nobody like a policeman for infusing the word with whatever meaning he chooses to give it. DC Hanlon pulled her hands out of her pockets. But there were no revolvers, only a notebook and a ballpoint pen. In a way, I would have preferred the guns.

‘So what’s this all about?’ I asked, knowing they must be the same words thousands of people use to police officers every day.

‘We’re investigating an incident last night involving Mr Longden. We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir. So that we can eliminate you from our inquiries, you understand.’

‘Right.’

They both smiled then, as if at some police officers’ in-joke. At this point, many householders might have offered them a cup of tea, but I wasn’t feeling that way inclined. Until they arrived at my door, I’d always thought I was a law-abiding citizen, but these two made me feel positively seditious.

‘Could you explain to us how you come to know Samuel Longden, Mr Buckley?’

‘It’s a bit of an odd story,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about that. We hear plenty of those.’

So they sat down, and I told them about the old man appearing at the canal restoration site, how he’d wanted me to do something for him, and the mysterious hints he’d dropped. They listened carefully, and DC Hanlon made the occasional note. But their faces were impassive, and they gave nothing away. For some reason, I didn’t tell them about the files and the wooden box that still sat on my table in the other room.

‘How many times did you meet Mr Longden?’ asked DS Graham.

‘Just the twice. The first time, when he approached me at Fosseway. And again two days later, when we met in the Cathedral Close.’

‘Just twice. Hmm.’

‘Yes?’

DS Graham wasn’t trying to conceal the fact that he didn’t believe me. ‘Just twice. And the first meeting was only a few days ago. Would you say that was enough of a relationship to make you a friend of Mr Longden’s?’

‘No, not really.’

He looked at Hanlon, and Hanlon looked at her notebook. ‘Yet three days ago you told Mrs Sylvia Wentworth that you were a friend of his,’ she said.

‘Sorry? Who?’

‘Mrs Sylvia Wentworth. Mr Longden’s next-door neighbour in Whittington.’

‘Ah.’

‘It was you, Mr Buckley, who called at Mr Longden’s home on Thursday evening looking for him?’