Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘Where did you park your vehicle last night, sir?’ asked Hanlon.

‘The Bird Street car park,’ I said promptly. ‘Behind Iceland.’

Unfortunately, the Escort was of an age when it was starting to show quite a number of scratches and small dents, most of them completely innocent — a stone thrown up from the road, someone opening their door too close in a car park. All these little incidents left their mark. I wondered how they could possibly mean anything to the two police officers. Did their inspection mean there were injuries to Samuel that could be matched to a part of the car that hit him? Did they think there might be a match to that dent in the wing of my Escort? The idea made me shudder as I watched DS Graham scrutinise my paintwork, tilting his head from side to side to get a better view.

Eventually, they stood up and dusted off their knees.

‘Well, I think that will be all for now, Mr Buckley. But we’d like you to call in at the station during the next day or two to sign a formal statement.’

‘No problem.’

‘Oh, and we may need you at the inquest.’

‘Really? But I can hardly tell you anything about Samuel’s death.’

‘His state of mind immediately prior to the incident might prove to be important.’

‘And his physical condition,’ said Hanlon, who clearly had me pegged as an OAP molester.

‘But how could anyone get away with running an old man down in the middle of the street and not even stopping?’

‘It happens,’ said Hanlon. ‘Usually it’s some drunk who panics and drives off.’

‘Yes, I see.’

There was a significant pause.

‘Which pub did you say you were in that night, Mr Buckley?’

The gibe had come from DS Graham. I flushed angrily at the insinuation. ‘I told you. The Earl of Lichfield. And I wasn’t drunk.’

‘Was the pub busy?’

‘Very quiet, actually.’

‘No doubt the staff will remember you, then.’

They left me in no doubt they would check.

‘We’ll be in touch, then.’

‘Yes. All right.’

They drove off, leaving me standing on my driveway in my shirt sleeves and slippers. It was a moment or two before I suddenly realised how cold I was, and a shudder ran through me.

It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be allowed to forget Samuel Longden. Because there is nothing rational about guilt. And it was certainly guilt that had etched last night’s scene into my mind, leaving me with a permanent recollection of a defeated, dejected old man shuffling painfully into the darkness, surrounded by a miasma of misery caused by me.

He’d looked like a man walking to meet his fate, a condemned criminal going to the gallows, with no hope of reprieve. He had, of course, been walking to his death.

‘I noticed your early morning visitors,’ said Rachel. ‘Were they interested in buying your car?’

She’d knocked on the door only a few minutes after the police had left, making me panic that they’d decided to come back and arrest me. I almost didn’t open the door, and it actually crossed my mind to escape by the back way and leg it across the gardens into The Charters. But I’d overcome the guilty response, and sense had returned. When I saw my neighbour standing on the doorstep, my first reaction was relief, then a burst of irritation.

‘I hadn’t even realised you were selling it,’ she said. ‘Are you getting a new one?’

‘Fat chance,’ I said.

‘Oh. Well, they gave it a good looking-over, didn’t they? I was surprised you didn’t take them for a drive round. I usually want to sit inside and try out the seats when I’m buying a car.’

‘Really? How interesting.’

‘I couldn’t help but notice, of course. I was just coming back from Mrs Knowles’ house.’

‘They were the police,’ I said. ‘And they weren’t thinking of buying my car. They were deciding whether or not to take me in for further questioning.’

Rachel laughed, thinking I was joking. Then she saw I wasn’t, and her eyes widened. ‘Seriously? But what do they think you’ve done?’

I leaned closer to her, with a conspiratorial whisper. ‘It could be murder.’ That should send her packing, I thought. And serve her right for being nosey.

She gasped. ‘You poor thing. That’s terrible.’ I felt her hand on my arm, and the next thing I knew she was in the house, leading me into the sitting room like a child. ‘You sit down while I make a cup of tea, and you can tell me all about. It must be an awful shock, being accused of something like that.’

She vanished into the kitchen, and I heard the sound of water running and a cupboard opening as she located my crockery with an unerring instinct. I wasn’t quite sure how it came about, but within five minutes I was sitting on my own settee telling Rachel what had happened to Samuel Longden.

Needless to say, she was riveted. She sat and listened with the kind of concentrated attention no one else ever gave me. Apart from the occasional word of encouragement or a small, probing question, she let me do all the talking. It was only as I re-lived the moments when I sat in the pub and watched the old man waiting on his bench that her eyebrows rose and she looked at me doubtfully.

‘I know, I know,’ I said, waving my hands defensively.

‘That sweet old man.’

‘Don’t you think I feel guilty enough?’

‘And he walked away from there... and died.’

‘So it seems. I suppose if I’d gone out and met him, if I’d spoken to him, instead of being such a coward... If I had the courage to explain to him how I felt...’

‘No,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s no use thinking like that. If these things are going to happen, they’ll happen. Accidents can’t be foreseen or avoided. It’s just fate.’

I wasn’t so sure about that. But I hadn’t yet fully acknowledged to myself what I feared about Samuel Longden’s death. I certainly wasn’t ready to share the fear with Rachel.

‘The police can’t seriously think it was you who ran him over,’ she said. ‘Not now they’ve met you.’

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘You’re not the hit and run type, Chris.’

‘Hmm.’ Was that really true? Wasn’t it exactly what I had done to Samuel in a way? A hit and run? I’d been trying to run away from our sudden contact. But I hadn’t been running fast enough.

‘So what about all his stuff now? What happens to that?’ she asked.

‘Stuff?’

‘The files, and the box. All the things he left. You said you were going to give them back to him. What are you going to do with them now?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose I’ll get rid of them some other way.’

‘We can read them first, of course. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? He did give them to you. You owe him that, at least. It must have been what he wanted.’

Thanks to the tea and the opportunity to tell the story, I was starting to feel better. There might have been something in what Rachel said about owing Samuel a bit of my time to read the files. But there was a telltale word she’d used, that ‘we’. It sent a shiver of horror through me. There wasn’t going to be any ‘we’, if I could help it. Quickly, I searched for a get-out.

‘There’s a daughter,’ I said at last.

‘What?’

‘His neighbour told me Samuel had a daughter.’

‘You never mentioned that.’

‘I forgot. It didn’t seem important until now. But obviously I’ll have to give the files back to her, won’t I? Next of kin and all that.’

She looked disappointed. ‘Did she live with him?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ll need to find out.’

‘We could just have a look at some of it in the meantime,’ she suggested.