by Mark Timlin
I had to stand on the chair to reach, the ceiling was so high. But I managed, and caught the handle, and with a squeak the door opened, and the end of a folding ladder appeared. I tugged it down, got off the chair and climbed up the ladder. I stuck my head into the dark space inside the door and saw the end of a leather suitcase in front of me. I reached in and pulled it to the edge of the opening, then slid it, and what must have been twenty years of muck, down to the ground. The case was heavy and awkward, and I got a faceful of dust. I coughed and rubbed my eyes, and Miss Simmons took a duster from the pocket of her dress and wiped the top of the case. It was worn and scratched, about two and half feet long, by two wide, by nine inches deep. There were a bunch of worn-out airline stickers on the top next to the inscription ‘Dog Soldier’, stencilled on in white paint that had faded to grey. I tried to open it, but it was locked.
I pushed the ladder back up, got on the chair again, and slammed the trapdoor shut. ‘I’ll take this now, if I may,’ I said, picking up the case. ‘I’ll let you know about the rest of the stuff. I don’t know if anyone will be interested. But I’m sure they’ll be grateful that you kept it.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ said Miss Simmons. ‘For that poor, sad girl.’
I took the case back into the living room and placed it on the floor next to my seat. Miss Simmons offered us more tea, but both Dawn and I refused. When we’d finished what we had, we both rose to leave.
‘Just one other thing,’ I said. ‘And there’s no reason why you should. But I don’t suppose you know the name of the firm who buried Jay Harrison. Or the names of local undertakers who were in business at the time.’
Miss Simmons clapped her hands with glee. ‘But I do,’ she said. ‘Of course I do. It was Cousins and Co.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ I asked.
‘Two reasons. I used to live just around the corner before I moved here, and Jasper Cousins did nearly all the funerals in the area. And then when I did move in here, they sent a letter to this address. Major, of course. I remember now. Miss K. Major. That was the name on the envelope. It must have been the bill. I can see it as plain as if it were yesterday. You couldn’t miss old Jasper’s bills. Big white envelopes they came in, with Cousins and Co…’ she shook her hands about, lost for words, ‘you know. Punched into the paper, so that it stood out.’
‘Embossed,’ I said.
‘That’s the word. Embossed. They had their name and address embossed on the top left-hand corner.’
‘What did you do with the letter?’ I asked.
‘I sent it back of course. Wrote “moved away” in big black letters across the back.’
‘Whereabouts are Cousins and Co?’ I asked.
‘Oh, they’ve gone now. Jasper retired, oh, ten years or more ago. More like fifteen. Time flies. I heard he moved to Stamford Hill. Somewhere like that. He’d be eighty now if he’s a day. He left the business to his son, who used to work for him, but it was never the same after Jasper left. I heard that the son got an offer for the premises that he couldn’t refuse, and he sold out. They pulled the old shop down and built a supermarket.’
‘Do you remember the son’s name?’ I asked.
Miss Simmons looked into the distance for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Do you know, I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s my memory again. I didn’t really know the son at all, you see. Not that I knew Jasper. But he was such a local character, that I felt that I did.’
Another dead end, I thought. But maybe old Jasper was still alive and kicking. Fighting the day when he’d be in need of a wooden overcoat himself, instead of screwing other people into them.
‘Miss Simmons,’ I said. ‘You’ve been marvellous. A great help. Thanks.’
‘It was a pleasure.’
Dawn took her hand and thanked her too.
‘There is one thing,’ the old lady said.
‘What?’ asked Dawn.
‘Will you let me know what happens?’ asked Miss Simmons, as she saw us out of the flat. ‘As I said, life is rather dull these days. I’d be intrigued to know what you find out.’
‘I will,’ said Dawn. ‘Perhaps I could call round for tea again some time.’
‘Any time at all,’ said Miss Simmons. ‘I usually pop out every other morning to the shops. But apart from that I’m always here. I’m not on the phone, I’m afraid. And the buzzer to the front door is broken, and the landlords won’t fix it. But just tell him on the desk that I said you’re welcome any time. And don’t take any nonsense from him.’
‘I won’t,’ said Dawn. ‘And as soon as we find out anything, I promise that I’ll come round and tell you all about it.’ And I knew that she would, and I loved her all the more for saying it.
10
When we got down to the foyer, the concierge was back on duty. He ignored us as we left the lift, but Dawn marched up to him and said, ‘The door buzzer to flat twenty-two is broken, isn’t it?’
The concierge was a big bloke with a lot of five o’clock shadow and an ill-fitting braided green suit and matching cap.
He shrugged at Dawn’s question. ‘Is it?’ he asked.
Not the correct answer.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Dawn. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself. Miss Simmons hasn’t got a telephone, and she’s all alone up there. I know what your boss’s game is. Now I want that buzzer fixed. And quickly. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Who are you then?’ he asked, and looked at me. But I stayed quiet. I put down the suitcase I was carrying and lit a cigarette. This could be a long conversation.
‘What does that matter? Are you going to get it fixed or not?’ said Dawn.
The concierge shrugged again.
Dawn took out her purse, and took a twenty-pound note from it. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
He looked at the note and licked his lips. ‘What do you want to know that for?’
‘Because if I give you this to get the buzzer fixed, and it’s not when I come back next week, I want to be able to find you.’
‘I’m always here,’ he said. ‘My name’s Bruno.’ And he reached out for the note.
‘You’re not always here,’ Dawn contradicted him. ‘You weren’t here earlier when we arrived.’
He mumbled something about a call of nature.
‘Well, Bruno,’ said Dawn, ‘against all my better instincts, I’m going to trust you. But I promise, when I do come back, and it’ll be soon, that if the buzzer isn’t fixed, I’ll find some way to make your life even more miserable than it is now. Understand?’
Bruno nodded, and Dawn put the twenty down, and it vanished inside his uniform.
‘Just remember what I said,’ she warned, and came over to me and took my arm.
‘She means it,’ I said over my shoulder as we left the building. ‘I should know. I’m married to her.’
I could almost see pity in Bruno’s dull eyes before I turned away.
When we got outside, I said, ‘d’you think he’ll do it?’
‘He’d better,’ Dawn replied. ‘Or I’ll have his legs.’
‘You’re amazing, babe,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’d’ve got through her door.’
‘I told you I’d make a good partner.’
‘And you do.’
‘And I will go back and see her. And make sure that her buzzer’s fixed.’
‘I know,’ I said again.
Dawn looked at the case I was holding. ‘So what’s in there?’ she asked.
‘Dunno. It’s locked. Let’s get it home. Have something to eat and a drink, and I’ll open it. Of course it may be nothing. Just a bunch of rubbish. She did leave it behind, after all.’
‘Will you send what’s inside back to Kim’s family?’
‘Course I will, if it’s anything decent. But I want a squint first. Who k
nows what’s in here.’
‘Used works probably. Knowing them. Or dirty knickers.’
‘Maybe. But it might not.’
We got back into the car and I drove home. When we got in, Dawn made us each a drink, found the makings of a Spanish omelette in the fridge, and got busy at the stove while I tried a couple of old keys in the lock of the suitcase. I didn’t want to bust it open if I didn’t have to. I was lucky. The third key I tried slipped the lock, and I opened the lid of the suitcase.
On top was a tapestry shawl or tablecloth, fringed at the edges. I opened it out. Its colours were still bright after all the years it had been locked away, and I laid it over the sofa where I was sitting. It took me back to being a teenager, and seeing the hippy revolution break out all over London. Underneath the shawl was a pile of record albums. A complete set of Dog Soldier releases up until Harrison had died. I looked at the laminated sleeves, and that took me back too. I’d had most of them myself, then lost or sold them as I got older.
I put the records on the floor, and went back to the case. All that was left were three books and a large brown envelope. The books were The Tibetan Book of the Dead, On the Road by Jack Kerouac and John Lennon in His Own Write. Pretty much par for the course for anyone into the alternative society at that time, I guessed. I put the books next to the records and opened the envelope. It bulged with eight-by-ten photographs. They were all of Harrison. Harrison and Kim together, or the pair of them with other people. Mostly at receptions or functions at clubs or restaurants. The group photos had been taken in London from what I could see. Posters and price lists in the background told me that. And in one photo, taken outside a restaurant, the back of a black cab. Everyone in the pictures looked like they were drunk or stoned, or both. The pair of them might not have had much money when they came over to England, but from the state of them in the photos, life looked like it had been one long party.
I looked closely at the groups. I didn’t recognize anyone straight off. Why should I? I certainly hadn’t been part of the swinging set as the sixties turned to the seventies. I was too busy taking my A levels.
Dawn started to serve up the food. ‘Anything interesting?’ she asked.
‘A complete set of Dog Soldier LPs. A little light reading. A new tablecloth, and a bunch of pictures of our happy couple with a load of people I’ve never seen before, which look like they were taken when Harrison and Kim were living over here.’
‘Let me look,’ she said, and I took the pictures over to the table and gave them to her, before I sat down in front of my omelette.
She leafed through the photographs. ‘What are you going to do with these?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to find someone who knows who all those people are,’ I replied. ‘There must be some old hippies still around with enough brain cells to remember. And I’m going to find one.’
‘The best of luck,’ said Dawn.
Next morning I took my problem to Chris Kennedy-Sloane. He was the only person I could think of who might know the kind of people I wanted. I called him early and told him about the photos that I’d found.
‘Old hippies,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mean me.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Anyone who was around at the time. This mob looks like the Chelsea set, circa nineteen seventy. They were all hippies then, weren’t they? Flower power and all that shit. LSD. Joints. Smack. All of them look like they were half dead when the pictures were taken. Most of them probably are by now. But the ones that aren’t are the types that you have as clients. Old money. Eton, Oxford, then straight down to Notting Hill Gate to get high. Rich fucking kids who’ve come into the family fortune since. Come on, Chris, you must know someone who could help me.’
‘Let me think about it. I haven’t had my coffee yet.’
As a matter of fact, neither had I. ‘Call me back,’ I said.
‘What now?’ said Dawn, who was lying next to me in bed looking superb in a black lace nightie that had slipped down to expose one round, white breast with its dark red nipple enlarged in the air. She saw me looking and smiled, and I felt her hand brush my thigh.
‘Not what you think,’ I said. ‘Up and at ’em.’
‘No nookie?’
‘Not this morning, honey. We’ve got to earn our bread and butter.’
‘Honey and butter. Sounds good. As a matter of fact, I’m feeling pretty greasy myself. You know, slippery and wet.’
‘Dry yourself on the sheet, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘We haven’t got time.’ And I kissed her, and the kiss might have turned into something more interesting if I hadn’t reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen to put on the kettle.
‘Spoilsport,’ she said, and pulled a face at me as I went. I pulled one back, and went into the bathroom and by the time I was finished she was up and making coffee. ‘What do you want to eat?’ I asked.
‘A bacon sandwich,’ she replied. So I got a fresh packet out of the fridge and put eight slices under the grill while she buttered some bread.
‘Come on then,’ she said as the bacon sizzled, ‘if we’re not going to have a fuck, what are we going to do this morning?’
‘Me,’ I replied. ‘I’m going to phone Chas at the paper and see if I can go in and look through the cuttings on Jay Harrison. There must be loads. I’ll try to come up with some names. Any names from the time he was living over here.’
‘And me?’ asked Dawn.
‘Jasper Cousins from Cousins and Co., the undertakers. I want you to go through the phone book. Start with the Js Miss Simmons said he’d moved to Stamford Hill or somewhere like that. Try to locate him. See if the old boy’s still alive. And if you have no luck, keep trying. There was the son who worked with him. The one who sold the business. He might have been around at the time. Maybe he knows something about Harrison’s funeral. Perhaps he saw the body, and can tell us for sure who it was that they buried. If you have no luck with the Js, go back to the As and keep trying.’
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘That’s what I like,’ I said, as I scooped the bacon onto the bread. ‘A staff who know their place.’
As soon as we’d eaten and I was dressed, I called Chas at his office in Wapping. He was at his desk.
‘Morning,’ I said when he answered. ‘What’s cooking?’
‘I hate it when you ask that,’ Chas replied. ‘It usually means you want something. And every time you do, someone ends up in hospital.’
‘Well, I do, as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘I want to go through your morgue, look up some old stories.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word,’ he said. ‘It makes me go cold.’
‘That’s what you hard-bitten hacks call it, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. But when you say it it has connotations. Bad connotations. I take it you’re on a new case.’
‘Correct.’
‘I thought as much,’ he said mournfully.
‘Relax, Chas,’ I said. ‘This one’s harmless.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘This time it’s true.’
He was silent for a second. ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘But I want to know what’s going on.’
‘That’s the trouble with you, son,’ I said. ‘You’re too nosey. That’s what gets you into trouble. Not me. But if you insist, I’ll tell you. Can I buy you lunch?’
‘OK. Be here at twelve-thirty. It’s a quiet day today. We’ll have a bite, you can tell me all, then I’ll introduce you to Amy, the keeper of the microfilm.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I said.
‘Right, I’ll see you then. How’s Dawn by the way?’
‘Fine.’
‘And married life?’
‘It’s only been a few days.’
‘And they said it would never last. Give her my best, and I’ll see you at
half twelve.’
‘Half twelve it is,’ I said, and hung up.
I passed on Chas’s best wishes and checked the time. It was just after ten.
I got hold of the A to K telephone book. ‘Cousins’ filled just over a column, maybe a hundred and fifty entries. Maybe slightly less. But there were only about twenty with the initial J. Plenty to keep Dawn busy and our phone bill well up.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘I’ll take the Chevy. I’ll see you later.’
‘I didn’t think you were seeing Chas until twelve-thirty,’ she said. She doesn’t miss much, does my wife.
‘I’m not. But I’ve got a couple of things to do first.’
She didn’t ask what. Just nodded and said, ‘Enjoy your lunch.’
I kissed her on the cheek, took the car keys and left. I drove up to the river and sat outside a bar I know on one of the wharves until it opened and I could get a beer. The truth was I needed some time on my own to think about the case. Or maybe some time on my own, period. I wasn’t used to being with someone all the time, living and working together, and I needed a little space. I felt a twinge of guilt, as if I was being disloyal to Dawn, but it couldn’t be helped. Some habits are hard to change, and the one of solitude is possibly the hardest.
Fortress Wapping was just as I remembered it from my only previous visit. High, barbed-wire-covered fences with metal gates manned by heavy-looking security guards surrounded the grim-looking office buildings. It was like a scene from one of those American prison movies from the thirties.
Chas had left my name at the main entrance and I parked the Chevy and went to find him. He was sitting at his work station, hunched over his PC, when I arrived. He punched in a number, closed down the screen and gave me a grin when he saw me.
‘Hello, Nick,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’
‘Can’t complain,’ I replied. ‘I see that this place is as cheerful as ever.’
