THE SAM BRYSON COLLECTION

by McLean, Russel D; Chercover, Sean

  “It’s a head-scratcher,” said Jamie.

  We both sat back. I took a deep drink of my pint and closed my eyes. The liquid seeped into my body and spread out along my limbs. A weight seemed to lift from me. Maybe I was trying to do too much of late; it felt good to finally just sit back and wipe my mind.

  Jamie spoke first: “You think maybe Sandy’ll be able to help?”

  I shrugged. “Darren didn’t have a record.”

  “Not one that he told Mrs. Archer about,” said Jamie. “After all, Sandy’s been bragging about that new Intelligence Department they gave to HQ. What’s the harm in asking?”

  ***

  Sandy met me in the car-park out the back ofTayside Police HQ. He was kind enough to bring out a Styrofoam cup of cofre

  “You know, I never like it when you call me at work.” he said. “It always means trouble.” His fair hair was ruffled by the wind.

  “You’ll be giving me a bad name talking like that,” I said.

  “Round here your name couldn’t be any worse,” he said. “So tell me what you want?”

  I took Darren’s photograph out of my pocket. “I need you to run an image.”

  “That’s an old photograph.”

  “Aye, it is.”

  “I could run a name.”

  “Jamie seems to think we’re not going to get anywhere with just a name.”

  Sandy smiled. “Where’d you have him hack into?”

  “We don’t hack,” I said. “It would be . . . unethical.”

  Sandy almost spat out a mouthful of coffee.

  I let it slide. “You’ve been boasting about these new facilities,” I said. “About the new Intelligence Department they tacked onto the side of HQ. How they have computers hooked up to all the other databases in the U.K., how no one can really hide from you any more.”

  “Aye,” he said. “But have you seen the forms we have to fill in? The paperwork. To protect the privacy of the innocent or what ever. Jesus, Sam!”

  “There’s always a way round it,” I said. “I’ve cut corners for you before. Hell, I’ve almost got myself killed doing you a favour.”

  He nodded. “Dudman,” he said. It was something I still held over his head. He’d sent me out after a police Witness who’d skipped custody. As it happened some very nasty people were also afterthe man, Dudman and they didn’t care that I was in the way when they came after him with a shotgun.

  “Fine,” said Sandy, eventually. “I’ll see what I can do. See what I san pull up.” He took the photo from me. “It’s an old photo, though. I mean, he won’t look like that now. Hell, he could have changed completely”

  I nodded.

  “But I’ll see what I can do.” He turned to go back inside. He stopped on the steps before pushing open the big glass doors. He twisted round his head and said, “You’re a bastard when you want something. Pulling out the guilt trips and the favour card.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’ll see you later, man,” he said. “We can forget about it over a few pints.”

  ***

  I went back o the offices. After checking with Babs, my secretary, if there had been any important calls, I went into my office and boiled the kettle. I stood by the window as I listened to the kettle boiling and looked out at Ward Road below. Across the way, the DSS office was closing for the day. The last few stragglers were being thrown out, told to come back with their pleas for money and housing the next day. The traffic on the road was getting heavier as the Dundee rush hour began to gather momentum.

  When the water had boiled, I made a cup of coffee and sat down at my desk. I checked the computer for e-mail and found none that seemed especially interesting.

  Looking at my watch, I decided it was too late to even attempt heading do to the shops. I decided I’d get Ros a gift the nextday. After all, it still gave me time to look like I’d been prepared this year.

  ***

  The next morning I woke up in Ros’s flat. She was lying beside me, still asleep, her long hair an explosion on the pillow. I moved gently, so as not to disturb her, and got dressed quickly before going into the kitchen.

  After I put the kettle or, she joined me, her eyes still half shut, and her hair still a mess. She smiled at me. “You’re as subtle as an elephant,” she said. “I’ll never understand how you can do a covert surveillance” She came over and kissed me quickly on the lips.

  “I’m going to take a shower, hon,” she said before she went back out to the bathroom.

  The hiss of the shower started up, and I stood in the kitchen and made two cups of coffee. I left hers sitting on the breakfast bar, and took mine through to the living room and sat down on the couch. I flicked on the TV and caught the BBC morning news.

  As the latest developments in the Middle East were interspersed with snippets about Z-list celebrities and their incessant couplings, my mind began to wander to Mrs. Archer. Something had been nagging me about het, about her story. Something in my head told me I hadn’t got the whole story out of her, that some piece of the puzzle was missing and she wanted it to remain that way.

  I was still mulling this over when Ros came back from her show- er. She sat down beside me. “You’ve got your serious face,” she said. “Never liked that one.”

  I tried to smile.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m used to it. You always were too serious. Probably always will be.”

  I looked at her and I thought about what Mrs Archer had said, about how you know when it’s love. I spend most days trying to prepare myself for the fact that what me and Ros have won’t last. I lie to myself and think I should enjoy each day because God only knows when the whole affair will come crashing down about our heads. But maybe Mrs Archer was right: You know it’s love when you keep coming back, no matter what. I always came back to her. Every thought, every good thought I’ve ever had has always come back to Ros. I can lie to myself all I like, but maybe that is love after all.

  ***

  I was in the office at ten thirty when Sandy called. “You got time for lunch?”

  “Aye,” I said. We arranged to meet at the Deacon’s at one o’clock. He rung off quickly, saying he had things to take care of

  I skimmed through what Jamie had left me on George Darren. There were a few references to Darren in Dundee in the early seventies. Residences, work, and so forth. He’d lived in three separate addresses in Dundee and had had two jobs. Both were in the retail. sector, first in a local butcher’s and then a bookseller’s. Both businesses had closed down abruptly in the mid-eighties, and Jamie was unable to get contacts with them. Other than that, information was thin on the ground. It looked like the man had simply disappeared.

  After I was done skimming the little information we had, I checked through the company accounts and made sure that all our cases were up to date. The thing about my kind of business is that it comes in ebbs and flows. Some months can be deadly quiet and others can throw up a storm of cases, sometimes more than we can handle. Mrs Archer had come to us in a quiet month. I was glad. It was a routine investigation, the kind of thing we could handle without too much pressure.

  At one o’clock, I walked into the Deacon’s. Sandy sat at a corner table with another man, dressed in an ill-fitting suit with white shirt and black tie. He sported a buzz cut and thick glasses.

  “Sam, this is Harry Kress,” said Sandy. “One of our computer whizzes.”

  Harry offered me his hand, which was sweaty. When I offered to get drinks, Harry asked for a Coke. Sandy and I decided it was late enough to grab a couple of pints.

  When I brought the drinks back over from the bar, a pretty girl who looked like she was working to pay off university fees took our orders for lunch. Harry said he couldn’t stay long, so he didn’t order any food.

  “So what have you got?” I said, right down to business.

  “Nothing on the name,” said Sandy. “Nothing to match the picture, exactly.”

  “The picture you gave u
s, of the suspect,” Harry said, “we ran through an age-enhancement program.”

  “From what I understand,” said Sandy, “these things aren’t one-hundred percent reliable. The final picture may not match what actually occurs in the aging process.”

  Harry nodded. “There are a number of factors that can contribute to aging. Loss of hair is one that’s difficult to predict, andif a person takes to wearing a wig, well, that can change the shape of their face. Then there are non-age-related factors, like an accident, or a scar, that can affect someone’s appearance.”

  I took a drink of my pint. “How close did you come?”

  Sandy took a computer printout from his pocket and passed it over to me. “This guy matches the aging process we did on your snapshot.”

  I unfolded the paper. His skin was sagging, more yellow than it looked in the l975 picture. His eyes were deeper in his skull, and the moustache was gone. His lips looked red, like the blood had rushed into them from the rest of his face. His hair was thinning, but not gone entirely. That which was left was pure white.

  “He doesn’t look a well man,” I said.

  “He’s not,” said Sandy. “We found him in the sex offender’s registry. Under the name Charles Sanderson.”

  “He changed his name?”

  “Not officially, no,” said Sandy. “But this is the closest hit we have for you. If our records are anything to go by, then after 1975 George Darren simply disappeared.”

  ***

  Gillian smiled as I walked into the registrar She always looked glad to have company whenever I came in. She’d let her blond hair grow out since the last time I saw her. It fell about her round little face in soft, framing curls. When she smiled at me. I was reminded of a child’s doll.

  ‘Always nice tae see you,” she said. “Ye don’t pop by nearly enough.”

  I smiled and leant on the desk conspiratorially. She always responded well when I made out what I was involved in was some secret operation. “Don’t worry” I said. “There’s no other archivist for me.”

  She winked at me and said, “So what do ye want from me today?”

  “I need information on a man named Charles Sanderson.”

  “Birth or death?”

  “Death,” I said.

  “Do you have an approximate idea of when . . . ?

  “1975,” I said.

  She nodded and swivelled her chair round to the flat-screen computer she kept on the desk. “They’ve been updating the archives,” she said. “Trying to give us everything they can in electronic form. Unfortunately for you, blue-eyes, nothing before 1979 is on the database just yet.” She smiled. I can put through a request, though.”

  “How long?”

  “Five hours.”

  I nodded.

  “You could hang around here, maybe, keep me company?

  I threw her a wink before I walked back out.

  Out on the street, my mobile started to bleat. When I looked at the caller ID, I guess I was more than a little surprised.

  ***

  The Howff cemetery is in the centre of town, next to Ward Road and Barrack Street. Walking around the centuries-old path-ways of this intimate resting place, winding among gravestones that date as far as the 1300’s, there is an intense sense of peace that cannot be found anywhere else in the city. Despite the fact one end of the Howff exits directly onto a main road the sound of the traffic becomes muted inside, as though trees that grow from the burial places absorb the sound, allowing their charges to sleep in peace.

  Cameron sat on a wooden bench, looking at a worn burial marker inscribed with a crude skull and crossbones. I sat next to him and looked at the stone.

  “Have ye spoken to your sister?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “Not for a few days.”

  “I got a letter this morning,” he said. “No from her, likes, but her lawyer. About splitting shared property and aw that.”

  “I’m sorry” I said.

  “It’s no that that bothers me,” he said. He didn’t look at me; his eyes were fixed firmly on the crude skull. “It’s that she dinnae even talk tae me herself y’know?”

  “It’s painful for her,” I said.

  “I loved her.”

  “She loved you.”

  “No always enough, is it, Sam?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He shifted his weight. “So what I wanted tae do, you see, likes, I called… What I mean is, you and me are still cool?”

  “Sure, man, we’re still cool.”

  “You’re no just saying that ‘cause you could use a friend who works fer one of the local rags?” .

  I shook my head.

  “No like we were ever the best of friends, anyway,” he said. “You were, like, my brother-in-law.”

  “We got on good,” I said. “We’ll still get on good.” I looked at the skull and crossbones. Normally skulls seem to be laughing, as though in death they finally realise how much of a joke life really is. This skull, however, looked deadly serious, as though it understood that life was more tragedy than comedy.

  “Aye, man,” he said.

  “And Gem loved you,” I said. “Just because things didn’t work out for you doesn’t make it any the less true.”

  He sighed. “Aye, whatever, Sam.” He laughed. “What’s it that bloody bunch of longhairs sing about on the radio? I Believe in a Thing Called Love? Hah, well I’ll tell ye something, man, I dinnae think I’m a believer any more.”

  ***

  Gillian waved the manila folder as I walked into the registrar’s reception. She was smiling broadly. “So tell me,” she said, “why ye want this?”

  “You know I don’t want to do that.”

  “Client confidentiality?” she said. “The poor bastard’s dead anyway.” She thought for a moment, then she nodded sagely. “Suspicious death, right? The family want you to look into it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Tell me,” she said, pulling the folder away out of my reach.

  I leaned across the desk. Her face was inches from mine. She moved in closer and smiled. I reached out and grabbed the folder from her hand. She yelped as I pulled back. I wagged a finger at her and she laughed. “Ye’d better have that back by tomorrow, Bryson,” she said. “The only reason I’m letting ye take it out is that I’m a fool for a pretty face”

  She laughed brightly as I left the building.

  ***

  “I just wish we had a picture,” I said to Jamie. We were in my office. I was behind the desk. Jamie lounged on the ratty old sofa.

  He nodded. “But it’s enough tae match- up to the information I got us on the living Mister Sanderson.”

  “They say disappearing is easy to do,” I said. “They’re right.”

  “Easy to do, but it’s no easy staying hidden,” said Jamie. “Christ, all it takes is someone determined tae find out what you’ve been up to.”

  “You know what I can’t work out,” I said, “is why. Why take on a dead man’s name and disappear so suddenly?”

  “Cold feet,” said Jamie decisively. “That’d dae it for me.” He laughed. “Things a man’ll do when he gets scared.”

  It didn’t sit right with me, still. “Where is Mister Sanderson living these days?”

  “Burnton, a wee village dpwn in the Borders. He’s been a car salesman at a nearby dealership, but he retired this year.” He looked pleased with himself. “So what’s the next move, Sam? Tell his old fiancée we’ve managed to find her long-lost love? It’ll be sweet, I bet.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I want to go down and have a word with our Mister Sanderson. Check out what’s going on, if he is who we think he is.”

  “Aye, like that’s going tae work!” said Jamie. “You’re just going to chap on his front door and say, ‘Excuse me, mate, you didn’t hap- pen to steal a dead man’s identity back in 1975?’”

  I smiled. “You never know. It might just work.”

  **

  I le
ft the office early and went over to Ros’s pad, smiling apologetically when she answered the door.

  “Okay, buddy,” she said, letting me inside. “You’re going to let me down tomorrow so the excuse is gonna have to be a good one!”

  “It’s the case I’m working on,” I said. “It involves a bit of traveling. So, you know, things aren’t going to go quite as planned.”