by Jack Benton
After finishing lunch, Slim left Lia to her work and headed back to Wentwood and the library. There, on a microfiche of a newspaper from 1982, Slim found a brief article. Less than a hundred words long, it was tucked into a corner of the Chronicle’s fourth page, hidden next to an advert for a tractor wholesaler, in as missable place as it was possible to be.
* * *
BODY FOUND ON TRACKS
The body of an unidentified male was found on the tracks of the Hope Valley Line just south of the Clifford Road level crossing. His body was discovered by a dog walker. The likely cause of death was given as an impact wound. According to a police spokesman, the death is not at this stage being treated as suspicious. The investigation continues.
* * *
Slim searched forward a few months but could find no more mention of the death. He made a note to ask Charles Bosworth the next time they spoke. Then he changed tack, looking for any entries under the name of Tom Jedder.
He had quickly figured the name was likely fake, a nickname maybe taken from some local source. There were no newspaper articles in the years surrounding the homeless man’s death, so Slim instead logged on to a computer database and did an online search.
There he found a historical reference: Thomas Jedder was the name of a local boy who had drowned in the river alongside the old bridleway round the turn of the last century, having presumably fallen in while leading a horse pulling a barge loaded with ore from one of the old mines. His existence in history had been reduced to a footnote in a local mining encyclopedia, and there was no mention anywhere of a ghost. The name was a coincidence, perhaps, but it was also a line of enquiry that was leading Slim farther and farther from Jennifer’s trail.
After finishing up in the library, he headed back to Manchester, where again he spent the early evening distributing his phone number among the local homeless population, this time along with the name of Tom Jedder as a reference. Without any leads so far, it was looking like a fruitless exercise. He’d received no calls, and had begun to encounter the same faces over again, many of which were no happier to see him than they had been the first time.
Aware he was quickly gaining an unwanted reputation on Manchester’s alleyways, he caught an earlier train than usual and headed back to Holdergate.
Instead of going straight back to his lodgings, he turned right out of the station, following a narrow road which meandered in roughly the same direction as the train line until he saw the lights of a level crossing appear out of the dark. Here, he climbed over a barrier and walked along the tracks with only the moonlight to guide him. He estimated the distance from the crossing where Litchfield claimed Tom Jedder’s body had been found, and when he reached it he stopped and sat down beside the tracks, letting the atmosphere of this desolate place soak into him, and wondering both who the homeless man and the person who had lain his body on the tracks might have been.
33
‘Look, Mr. … um, Hardy? I’m afraid you’re not really following correct procedure by just showing up and asking to speak to any nurse over a certain age. We’re busy. It would have been more appropriate to call ahead.’
Slim gave the staff nurse the most pathetic smile he could muster. ‘I know that, and I’m sorry. I’m just so desperate for information that I thought I’d stop by, just on the off-chance someone remembered.’
‘What is it exactly?’
Slim took a deep breath, rehearsing the backstory he had scribbled down in the margin of a discarded newspaper on the train from Holdergate.
‘My grandmother recently died, and in her will there was a note about a child she had from a previous marriage my mother had never known about. It left a quite substantial amount of money to be put toward the proper burial of the son in question, who died sometime in 1977, according to my grandmother. Apparently he died here, on the cancer ward. She gave only a first name, Jim.’
The staff nurse shrugged. ‘Look, this is a quite fanciful story. Come up to the staff room and we’ll see if anyone has any clue what you’re talking about.’
Slim followed the nurse, who gave her name as Sue, up to a plain common room where several members of staff sat around eating or drinking. One or two wore the weary expressions of people at the end of their shift, while a few others looked about to begin.
Sue called them to attention and introduced Slim. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave a sheepish grin.
‘Go on, tell them what you told me,’ Sue said.
Slim repeated his story, directing it at the older workers in the group. A few shrugged and a few others shook their heads. ‘Perhaps I could just leave a contact number?’ he said, taking out his wallet and withdrawing a few copies of the simplified version of his business card which featured just his name and phone number.
As he smiled and started to back out of the room, one of the younger nurses picked it up, squinted at his name, and then let out a squeal of delight.
‘Oh, I knew it! Slim Hardy! I saw you on the TV.’
Disinterested faces suddenly seemed interested. A few random questions fired his way, but Slim brushed them off. Then Sue said, ‘Mr. Hardy, did you just spin us a line?’
‘No … I, ah, I have to go. I have an appointment.’
‘It’s him!’ the young nurse gushed. ‘He’s a famous detective.’
‘Actually, I’m a private investigator.’
Sue and a couple of others were rolling their eyes. Slim had started to sweat, so he backed out of the room and hurried for the nearest lift. He made it, only to find Sue at his shoulder, eyes glowering. The lift opened and she bundled him inside.
‘I’ll just make sure you find the way out,’ she snapped. ‘Just in case you were thinking to waste any more of our time.’
Luckily for Slim, there were two other people in the lift. Sue glared at him all the way to the ground floor, and then walked with him until the main entrance came into view.
‘Good luck with your investigation or whatever you’re doing,’ she snapped, leaving him to walk the last part of the way on his own. Slim glanced back and saw Sue waving to a security guard as he made his rounds.
He walked down the street and turned the first corner that took him out of sight of the hospital. The second building he passed was a dingy pub called the Duck and Crown. Slim found himself sitting on a bar stool with a pint in front of him yet no memory of the words passing his lips. He stared at the amber liquid, frowning until his brow hurt, fingers trembling on his knees. He sensed another turning of the wheel, another cycle about to begin.
He had followed this road so many times. He had broken the cycle, repaired himself, only to find the taint still there, hiding beneath the surface. Sooner or later the layers above would be stripped away and Slim’s illness would be laid bare, grinning up at him, skeletal hands reaching out to plunge him back down into its inky depths. And he would struggle and fight and perhaps get his head back above water, but one day, he knew, the strength to fight would no longer be there, and it would claim him.
The smell was intoxicating. Slim’s eyes watered, his vision blurred. His head pounded and he gritted his teeth, holding in a scream that rattled at the back of his throat, fighting to get out.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep fighting. The strength was no longer there, and he couldn’t handle it alone.
He needed help.
Pulling out his phone, he called the first number that appeared, and when a woman’s voice answered, he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound would come out. All he could do was mouth two words:
Help me.
34
It was night, but he didn’t know what time. He was lying on the ground next to a park bench, and from the ache in his side it was clear he had rolled off, perhaps catching the sloping corner of a concrete foot post on the way. His phone lay beneath him, jammed into a crack in the concrete. The casing had gained a couple of scratches but the rest of his indestructible Nokia was intact. And charged. He marveled at th
is miracle of engineering and design as he opened the display to find seven missed calls from Lia. His vision blurred as he squinted at her name, then his stomach contracted and he vomited between his feet.
‘Oi, muppet!’ came a shout from nearby. Slim looked up to see three young men strutting across the park, all baseball caps, trainers, and untucked dress shirts. ‘I’ll clean your shoes for fifty quid!’ Then they were gone in a calamitous cackle of discordant laughter, passing through a gate onto a road.
Slim tried to get up but slipped back down, so gave up and just sat with his back against the bench seat. He tried to remember what had happened, but it appeared he had blacked out. He remembered leaving the hospital and entering the pub, ordering a drink … then nothing. He didn’t remember if he had even begun drinking it.
He felt strange, as though he hadn’t really gone on a binge at all, but had rather walked into a place and emerged in a different one entirely. Was this what Toby meant about visitors? Was it just a lyrical way to describe alcoholics and other misfortunates on society’s fringes stumbling through a life that had no need for them? Was he visiting now, sitting in some alternative reality while in another time and place a different man calling himself John “Slim” Hardy was living an entirely more fulfilling existence?
The temptation to just give up and turn himself over to his urges was momentarily overwhelming. It was probably not so late that there wasn’t a bar open somewhere nearby which would take his credit card, or a late night newsagent, or failing that, somewhere with a window fragile enough to be broken in. As the urge passed, however, he found that the difficulty of getting up outweighed his desire to drink and drink and drink until there was nothing left but a fizzing puddle where a man had once stood.
He sighed, his head lolling, and through a blur as his eyes faltered once again he saw a man waving as he approached Slim from across the park.
The concern that this was a lout looking for a face to kick was immediately extinguished by a friendly smile surrounded by the polyester fur of a duffel coat. Slim sat up as the man slung a rucksack off his shoulder and opened it in the same moment, demonstrating an action he had clearly performed hundreds of times before.
‘I have sandwiches, but I also have one burger left. Still hot. It’s cold out, isn’t it?’
The man sat down on the bench, leaning over Slim like a father leaning over a child who had fallen in mud. Slim took the offered bundle of greaseproof paper and felt a welcome warmth emanating from inside. He didn’t remember when he had last eaten, but it was likely sometime before he started to drink.
‘Do you have any water?’ he asked, realising his throat was parched.
‘I have hot soup,’ the man said, producing a flask. ‘Well, it’s not “hot” hot, but there should be a bit of warmth left.’
‘Thanks.’
Slim took the offered cup and took a long swallow, immediately feeling better. The urge to continually drink was slowly dying, leaving him left with the aftermath of a savage binge from which to begin to rebuild. It was possible. He had done it before.
‘I haven’t seen you before,’ the man said. ‘How long have you been out here?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Couldn’t you get to a shelter?’ The man glanced up. ‘It’s clear now, but it’s going to rain soon. It could be rough out here in a couple of hours. Where are your things?’
Slim looked around him, frowning, then suddenly realised what the man had assumed.
‘I’m not—’ he began, but the man put up a hand.
‘It’s all right. If you tell me where I’m likely to find you, I can send someone to assess you. There are programs. I’m guessing it’s the drink. You don’t look a substance user.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘Look, I know what this looks like, but I’m not homeless. I mean, I have been in the past, but I’m not now. I just had some trouble, that’s all. I … relapsed.’
The man was nodding as though he still didn’t believe Slim, but he stuck out a hand and said, ‘My name’s Terry Denton. I run Giving, a homeless charity. What’s your name?’
‘John Hardy. But people call me Slim.’
They shook hands. Terry frowned. ‘Sounds familiar—wait! You’re that guy. The one who’s been wandering around asking questions. Several of my regulars have mentioned you. Caused quite a stir, you have. What on earth happened to you?’
‘I relapsed. Other than that, I’m not quite sure.’
‘Well, you’re still in one piece, by the look of things. That’s a decent start. Do you drink coffee?’
Slim couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I drink as much of it as I can.’
35
The clock behind the man chopping cabbage at a counter read 3 a.m. Slim faced Terry Denton across the Formica tabletop of the late-night greasy spoon, a steaming cup of long-overbrewed coffee in front of each.
‘You understand the rules of the street,’ Terry said.
Slim nodded. ‘You either get off it or you die.’
‘Or you keep going back,’ Terry added with a wry smile. ‘Took me ten years to get off it for good, and I faced my maker a number of times. In the end, though, I had a little more gumption than he did. Been forty years since I got out of the gutter, but the pain of it stays with me every day. That’s why I founded Giving. Every time I help someone back to their feet, the buzz … I mean, I don’t know what people are getting high on these days, but it’s like no drug I ever took.’
Slim smiled. ‘I can understand,’ he said. ‘I think the only thing that makes me feel better than a night on the bottle is solving a crime.’ His smile faded, and he sighed. ‘It’s a shame the journey is so hard.’
‘Never stop fighting,’ Terry said. ‘Once a demon has its claws in you, there’s no shaking it off. I don’t care what anyone says. You’ll never be free once you have the taint.’
‘You seem to have done all right.’
‘Because I face what could be again every single day,’ Terry said. ‘I work the graveyard shift, midnight until dawn, most nights. That’s when you see the worst things, those closest to the edge. In their eyes I see my own, over and over again. You want to break the cycle? Go work with the worse drinkers you can find. Not bingers or functionals, but those who could literally die on their next drink. There’s your cure right there.’
‘Maybe I’ll try it.’
‘You’re young enough yet to do it. Now, tell me what brought you to a park bench at two in the bloody morning and let me see if it adds up to what I’ve heard.’
‘I’m looking for a homeless man who died in the cancer ward of Manchester Royal Infirmary in January 1977, the same night that a young nurse disappeared from Holdergate Station, leaving no trace, and was never seen or heard from again. Is there anything I’ve said that you can help me with?’
Terry Denton reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He shrugged as Slim lifted an eyebrow. ‘Let an old man keep one vice,’ Terry said, standing up. ‘Give me five minutes. Then I’ll tell you what I know.’
36
‘It’s perfect,’ Kay said. ‘Are you looking at it right now?’
Slim held up the picture with one hand, angling it to the light, pressing his phone to his ear with his other. ‘I still don’t see it.’
‘Clearly the kid had no idea what he was doing, but he’s lined it up with such accuracy that my friend was astonished,’ Kay said. ‘Polaroids have a longer exposure than a regular camera, and any further movement would have blurred it too much for the figure to be seen, making it clearly the result of a superimposed image. As it is, it’s just clear enough that you can be fooled into thinking it’s just that one man.’
Slim frowned. ‘As a layman, run it by me again. What exactly am I seeing?’
‘The boy is standing a few feet inside a window. According to my friend, the room would have been in near darkness, perhaps a corr
idor or porch, otherwise the reflection would have been more prominent. As it is, most of the other signs of it are hidden among the trees at the top or the buildings on either side. He’s taken a picture of the street, and both a man and Jennifer Evans can be seen, but the reason the man appears fractionally blurred is because a reflection of another man almost perfectly covers him. It’s not a direct reflection however, or the image would have been too large. According to my friend, such a situation could have been caused by a secondary reflection in a slightly angled surface such as a mirror. This in turn is projecting an image on to something behind the boy holding the camera, something more likely stainless steel, which has both reduced and resized the original to exactly match the size and stature of the man standing in the street. It’s frankly remarkable.’
‘A reflection of another person is overlaying the man standing by the park?’
‘That’s exactly it. It’s so accurate it has to have been a million in one fluke chance.’
Slim nodded, but still couldn’t see it, despite what Kay said. ‘Is it possible to separate the two images so they might be identified?’
‘My friend is working on it. He said he’ll get back to me in a day or two. He couldn’t guarantee that he could produce anything worthwhile, but he said to wait and see.’
‘Thanks, Kay. Did your friend have anything to say about the supposed missing footprints?’
‘That, he said, is likely to have a far more rational explanation. A trick of angles, most likely, or shadows. He said he couldn’t be sure unless he visited the spot in question, but that the answer would most likely be found there.’
