Sing Like You Know the Words (48 page)

Matthew couldn’t see any kind of
story in it, but in the end he agreed to do what David asked:
didn’t he always? A flight and a hotel that was comfortable, but
not embarrassingly lavish, were arranged for him. David told him
that Walcott jumped at the suggestion that Matthew be the one to
hear his story (I told you Matt, you’re a regional celebrity) and
so the trip was settled.

David drove him to the airport
personally. It was a dark, wet night that made the prospect of a
weekend in Southern Europe seem like not such a bad idea. The
tickets and itinerary bulked in the chest pocket of his coat, with
his passport. He felt a little of what he had imagined his career
might be when he’d started off in journalism, even if the reality
was only that he was running an errand for David; but why David
should be so concerned about Walcott was much more interesting to
Matthew than Walcott himself. He told himself that was the real
reason he was making the journey.

-Remember, David was telling him
again. You have to find out where he’s living or at least where we
can find him, otherwise there’s no way to do anything for him.
Don’t push him too much though. You might reassure him that no-one
cares about any money he is supposed to have run off with. The
police know that was a tale made up by his partner even if nothing
can be proved.

-Is that true?

-Don’t sound so surprised, Matt,
you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers, even if
you wrote it. Anyway, however you get it; address, phone number,
contact details. Otherwise we can’t do anything.

A sudden thought occurred to
Matthew.

-You don’t suppose at all that
there’s any good reason for his paranoia, and that this trip could
be dangerous do you?

-Matthew, if I believed that for
a moment do you think I’d let you go in my place? Just put it down
to my curiosity. But please, indulge me just this once. Call me
when you get to the hotel.

It was obvious that David was
not telling the whole story. He was so much on edge that he had not
been able to invent plausible reasons for his concern. Maybe
Walcott would shed some light on the situation, if only Matthew
could find him.

***

Matthew wasn’t the only person
looking for someone; but Patricia was more interested in Walcott’s
former partner than in the missing book keeper.

Patricia hadn’t gone looking for
Derek Moss again: the flame of that case had died, though the
frustration of it remained always hot enough to burn. It was the
case that wouldn’t leave her alone, not the other way around.

When David spoke the name, in
the course of some boring conversation about his constituency work,
Patricia had to sit up and take notice. Moss wasn’t a big part of
what David was talking about, but to Patricia, the name on its own
was enough of a sign. She didn’t say anything about it to David,
but she took more notice of the conversation and resolved to visit
Mr Moss as soon as she could.

It turned out that Derek Moss
had given up the investigation business after his accident; which
was convenient because the business had given up on him before
that. Somehow he’d found his way into a job at a law firm that
specialised in debt recovery.

Moss operated as a kind of
consultant for the firm. He was supposed to explain the practical
side of debt enforcement to the kids who actually ran the business.
They were on the phones all day, chasing up money that was owed to
clients, and since everything they said and did was selected from a
menu of options on a computer screen, there was not much for Derek
to do. That was fine with him: the job didn’t pay well, but he
could be sure of being left alone. Also he felt that he enjoyed a
certain status. It suited him to be thought of as an expert without
having to take on responsibility. His back injury was an honourable
wound that he did not hesitate to rely on, if necessary.

Patricia didn’t know the law
firm except by reputation, but Derek’s connection to the profession
made him easy for her to trace. This time she didn’t just go to him
and ask for information. She wanted to know a little more about him
first. She discovered that Moss was a creature of habit. He lived
alone, in a small house that he’d inherited from a relative. He
wasn’t a drinker: he seemed to have no obvious vices and few
interests. Most weeks he met the same acquaintances on the same
night; and on Sunday he took his ancient mother to lunch, somewhere
within easy driving distance.

It was an old Victorian terrace
house, not so charming, but not falling apart either. It was a
Saturday afternoon and Patricia was surprised to see that the front
door was ajar. She knocked, but no one answered, so she passed
through the tiny hall to the scullery kitchen, where noises of
someone scuffling about could be heard.

A large backside, which must
have formed a substantial proportion of someone she assumed to be
Derek Moss, was facing her; not so covered as it ought to have been
by a pair of thin black trousers that struggled to contain the
white fleshy expanse. The rest of Derek was wedged into a space
between the kitchen drainer and the wall, hemmed in by what looked
like a new washing machine.

-Excuse me, the door was open,
Patricia called. Derek’s face appeared briefly in the tiny space
that was visible between himself and the wall.

-Be with you in a minute. Just
need to finish plumbing this in.

Patricia stepped nearer to the
work in progress.

-Sure you can manage? she asked.
Must be hard for you, working in that corner.

-How do you mean?

-In that narrow space. With your
bad back.

-Oh, yes. Quite hard. I suffer
through it you know. There, it’s done.

Improbably, it seemed that he
was able to extricate himself from the working space. He pushed the
washer into the area he’d vacated, using the considerable bulk of
his person. Then he wiped his hand on a rag and offered to shake
hands with Patricia.

-I remember we’ve met before,
but it was a while ago. What can I do for you?

-My name is Patricia Thomas. I
was one of the lawyers in the Obuswu case. I spoke to you a few
years ago while you were in the hospital.

Moss looked like he’d been
slapped, but there was none of the bluster of their previous
meeting. He slumped a little, like a man who finds it too much
trouble to be angry.

-You don’t let go very easily.
If you want to ask whether I have anything to tell you about that
case, the answer is still no.

-I’ve come with some good news.
It looks like your old partner in the investigations business may
have turned up.

-You mean Mitchell.

-Yes, he’s been living in Spain
you know, but he’s in some kind of trouble and I think he wants to
come home. You could be in the news again Derek. He was quite the
villain of the piece wasn’t he, at least in the reports? Of course
if he turns up he may have a different story.

-What are you getting at?

-Maybe I’m thinking about the
insurance claim you submitted after that robbery, and all the money
that was supposed to have disappeared with Walcott.

-That’s old news

-And difficult to prove,
probably. But even employers like yours, who obviously don’t bother
with criminal record checks, might be concerned if I talked to them
about an employee who’s suspected of insurance fraud as well as
having a record.

Patricia remembered that Moss
had never been prosecuted for the thefts from the police station,
but that was for him to argue. He didn’t seem to have any argument
left in him.

-I remember the last time we
spoke. You were like a little girl then. You’ve changed. It sounds
like you’re threatening me.

-Maybe I am threatening you
Derek. But I can also promise you something. I promise you that
whatever you tell me, it’s only for my personal information. Just
between us and it goes no further.

There was something about the
way that she said it which made Derek believe her. He paused.

-Just between us I might be able
to live with. You’re catholic aren’t you?

-How do you know that? And why
do you want to know?

-You’re not the only one who
remembers things. Your husband is that MP who wants to be the next
prime minister. I’ve heard of you. Knew I’d seen you before.

-But why does it matter?

-It means you understand
confession. Just let me wash my hands. I’ll make us some tea.

Attending to the kettle and mugs
helped Derek to steady himself. Once they’d settled into the tiny
lounge, with its oversized armchairs, and Moss had squeezed his
bulk into the most distressed of them, he seemed more himself
again; almost relaxed.

-I should tell you at the start,
he said. I killed John Obuswu. I didn’t mean to do it, though I did
mean to hurt him. I never meant to kill anyone, but I beat him and
he died.

-The station log said that you
were only in the cells for ten minutes. That’s not enough time for
the beating he had.

-It was a bit longer than ten
minutes. The desk sergeant did me a favour. And there were no
prisoners in the next cells to hear anything. But poor John didn’t
make much noise anyway. That’s a reason I didn’t know I’d gone too
far. I’ve asked myself over the years if I was just unlucky;
whether there was something wrong with him already; whether I hit
him harder than I meant to. Either way it changes nothing.

There was something unpleasant
in the way he talked of being unlucky, as if he had been the
injured party. Patricia ignored the self pity. For now she only
needed the facts.

-You must have had a reason.

-I expect you heard when you
were doing your snooping that I was a racist. Well it’s true, I’m
white and I prefer my own people. It was more accepted in those
days. You didn’t have to justify it. But it wasn’t for that. The
truth is I was trying to do my job.

-By giving a drunken tramp a
beating?

-Beatings weren’t so unusual
then either. Just a way to get information, though it never was my
style, whether you believe me or not. Some of the lads used to say
I was soft. I’ve never been a violent man. Look at me. I’m fat,
slow, and lazy. I was the same then as I am now. But it was
accepted that sometimes you needed to be a bit rough to break a
case. As it turned out, it was the case that broke me.

-I looked at the records of the
cases you were working. I couldn’t tell what you might have wanted
to see John about.

-Did you come across the name of
Francis O’Riordan?

-The sex abuse case?

-That was the one. I’d been
working on it for weeks. In my own time as well as at work. I had
some dedication in those days. When they sacked me, you know, it
was nothing to do with Obuswu. Back then, anyone who suspected I
might have hit John too hard would have shrugged and been grateful
it wasn’t them in my position. Anyway that’s beside the point. Like
I said, no one believed I had something like that in me. They told
me at the disciplinary, afterwards, that I was a disgrace as an
officer, and that was true as well; but I hadn’t been dishonest;
not before that night. Afterwards I admit, I didn’t care. Maybe I
was looking for a way out. Being thrown out was a relief when it
finally came.

-But before John, I was trying
to do what I thought was the job, and the O’Riordan case was one of
those that got to me. They say everyone has one or two that get
hold of them like that.

-You remember the case. The lad
was leaving church after choir practice when it happened, and by
the time they found him he was unconscious. You saw the medical
summary probably, so I’ll not go into it. The poor little mite was
buggered to within an inch of his life. He couldn’t tell us
anything afterwards. Claimed he could remember nothing.

-I remember it was a distressing
case.

-Distressing isn’t the word.
There were some memories from my own childhood that… well, there’s
no need to go into that either. In any case I was going to find the
guilty party in that case whatever happened, and maybe I was
desperate to prove to the men and to myself that I could do the
job, whatever they said about me being soft.

-But what does any of that have
to do with John?

-I forget, you only read the
reports. There’s always a lot they leave out. You know that at the
time Obuswu was picked up he was sleeping in the cemetery at the
Parish Church, but that wasn’t the only place he dossed out. He was
a regular at Saint Pats as well. That was where the attack took
place, remember.

-And there’s other stuff about
John you won’t have read. When he was out of it, he was in the
habit of pulling out his plonker and waving it around. Indecent
exposure as they say. Showed it to boys as well as girls. Looking
back I’m not sure he would have known the difference; the state he
was in most of the time.

-So you thought that…?

-It was more than guessing. I
had a witness. Someone who put him in the right place on the night
of the attack. One of his mates if you can call them that. But no
one likes that kind of thing, so I wasn’t surprised he told me.
Blacks hate that queer stuff more than we do.

-In any case you can imagine how
much good one of John’s drinking pals would be as a witness in
court, with clever people like you working for the defence. I was
sure I knew what the score was, but I had no way to prove it; not
without a confession. And then Johnny was pulled into the cells
when I happened to be at the station. It was too good a chance to
let slip.

-What did he tell you about
it?

-I was stupid to think that he’d
be able to tell me anything. He wasn’t making any sense. He was
frightened of course, and who knows what state his brain was in. I
thought if I could frighten him some more it would shock him to
sense. And I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted him to feel
my anger.