Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘Well, shall I go and get it then?’ Joints cracking, Uncle Stan rose out of his armchair.

Auntie B scarcely glanced up from the news. ‘Why are you asking me, Stanley?’

Uncle Stan let out a rasp of exasperation. Life could be such a bugger. He left the room and returned five minutes later with a suitcase. He placed the suitcase on the coffee-table.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘this suitcase was left to you by your real parents, Moses. Don’t know what’s inside it. Haven’t got an earthly. None of my business, really. All these years it’s been up there in the attic, getting dustier and dustier, waiting for you to be twenty-five. Well, now you are, so you’d better have it.’

Moses listened carefully as Uncle Stan told him what little he knew about the suitcase. Strange how familiar it seemed to him, though he had probably never seen it before. He picked it up and turned it round in his hands. It was as if it had once occupied a space in his memory, only to fade with time until it became so dim as to be invisible. The blank space had remained, meaningless until solved, like a riddle. A space that the suitcase, reappearing again like this, fleshed out, filled in, fitted.

One foot six by two foot six. Old leather, black where scarred. Battered brass catches. No tags or stickers, though. No marks of identification. And dusty enough to write your name on. So he did. Moses, he wrote.

He didn’t open it that night. He waited until he got back to The Bunker the next day. On the journey down he noticed how light it was, almost as though there was nothing inside. That would be funny, he thought.

He opened a bottle of wine and put some music on. He placed the suitcase on the sofa. He turned the tiny key in the locks, first the left, then the right, and snapped the catches open. He lifted the lid.

A smell drifted up — something like dusty roses. A scent, perhaps. But a scent that had been preserved, that had aged. He parted the tissue-paper.

The contents of the suitcase were as follows:

1 dress

1 pair of red shoes (child’s size 2)

1 photograph album.

That was it.

It was after ten o’clock at night. Arms pinned behind his back, almost as if handcuffed, Chief Inspector Peach stood at his office window. The storm was building. Staggered flashes of lightning took pictures of his massive silhouette. The trees over the road heaved, strained, testing the strength of their roots. Rain hissed down through the light of a single street-lamp, fine as silver wire. In the intervals between thunderclaps a typewriter could be heard, scratching and clicking beyond the door like an insect.

Storms made Peach think. Their explosions loosened the order in his mind. Thoughts long buried came tumbling down. He turned away from the window and crossed the room to his desk, his boots deliberate on the wooden floor. The angle of his head, lowered in thought, blurred the line of his jaw; his double chin had, with the years, almost doubled again. He sank heavily into his chair.

There were times when he saw himself as a premier surrounded by dissidents, when he saw his office as the object of endless plots and conspiracies. Deep down, he knew this was nonsense, morbid nonsense, and an injustice both to himself and his colleagues, but then the sound of thunder came to him, unfurling miles away, rolling across the countryside, breaking against the glass of his window –

He still remembered — how could he forget? — the weeks in 1959 when that feeling had washed over him, sucked him down, when no amount of struggling could bring him back to the surface. Though he had trusted nobody, he had been forced to turn the running of the village over to three of his sergeants while he retired to bed — to rest, recuperate, re-think. And there had been moments when he doubted whether he would ever return.

The breakdown –

Sheets of glass, infinite and tough, between himself and everything else. Sheets of glass thickening, thickening. Until he couldn’t hear anything any more, until he couldn’t make himself heard. He didn’t want to think about it. He had worked through it, that was the main thing. When the feeling came now, he took it for what it was — the accumulating weight of responsibility, a sign of fatigue, his mind telling him to ease off. He obeyed. At sixty-four, he couldn’t afford to go through all that again. He might really never come back this time.

A knock on the door dropped into his thoughts. Gratefully, he watched them scatter and disperse. When he spoke, his voice had its usual authority, its usual depth of tone. So much so that it blended with the retreating thunder.

‘Come in.’

Dolphin — now Sergeant Dolphin (Peach had promoted him in 1969) — steered his large face round the door. ‘I was wondering, sir, what you wanted me to do with this.’ And he shuffled backwards into the office dragging a curious structure that appeared to be made out of strips of corrugated cardboard. It was about six feet tall, four feet wide and two inches thick. It had been painted brown. Leather straps dangled from the underside.

Ah, Peach thought. Ah yes.

‘Lean it up against the wall, Dolphin,’ he said, ‘then take a seat. I want to have a word with you.’

Dolphin manoeuvred the structure into the gap between the bookshelf and a large-scale wall-map of the village. Then he closed the door and sat down. Too eagerly, perhaps, for a spring twanged somewhere beneath him. He cringed, muttered an apology.

With his moments of embarrassment, his nail-bitten fingers and his rosy outdoor face, he sometimes reminded Peach of a giant schoolboy. Peach approved of his eagerness, though. It was one of the qualities he looked for in a police officer. That, physical presence, and a shrewd mind. And Dolphin, surprisingly, had all three. That blundering physique of his concealed a wealth of deftness and tact. But Dolphin was fidgeting, tugging at his collar and rearranging his legs, and Peach finally took pity.

‘An extraordinary case, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Most unusual,’ the sergeant said. ‘Ingenious, really.’

Peach frowned. He didn’t want obsequiousness. He wanted fresh opinions, new angles: feedback. He prompted Dolphin once again. ‘Had you suspected him at all, the greengrocer?’

‘Well, no. Not exactly.’ Dolphin shifted in his chair, as if by finding a comfortable position he would also find the right words. ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I know he’s thought of escape before. It’s just that I never thought he’d have the — ’ he faltered for a moment then, trampling his inhibitions, came out daringly with — ‘balls.’

Peach’s lower lip curved, became succulent. ‘I must say,’ he said, ‘that it surprised me too, Dolphin.’

‘Though, God knows, he spent enough time with Dinwoodie.’ Dolphin plunged into the stream of his thoughts. ‘I suppose I should’ve suspected something, really. I just thought he was all bark, that’s all. You know, like Dinwoodie. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, but nothing ever comes of it. And all the time he was building that — ’ but he couldn’t find the word to describe the structure that was leaning against the wall, so he pointed instead — ‘ that ’

A sudden flicker of lightning and the structure jumped out into the room. Peach waited for thunder, but none came.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘I think there’s an important lesson to be learned there, Dolphin. We tend to overestimate ourselves sometimes. Get cocky. Complacent. That’s the biggest mistake you can make. Vigilance at all times, Dolphin. I can’t stress that strongly enough. Security must be watertight. Watertight. Not a drop of it must ever escape. Do you follow me?’