The Memory Man Page 6

  There were a dozen other cars in the car park. They were clustered around the entrance.

  She noticed a solitary car parked at the far side of the car park, maybe three hundred metres away. It was caught between the pools of light cast by the overhead lights.

  It could have been a police lure, set to catch car thieves in action.

  She loaded her groceries into the car, remembering too late that she had forgotten the milk.

  She wasn’t going back to get it.

  She got in and headed towards the exit.

  All she wanted to do was get home, take a bath, have a glass of wine, and maybe delight in the ping of the microwave as one of those pizzas was served up.

  She caught sight of someone running across the path of her headlights and hit the brakes, hard. The back end slewed away from her, but mercifully she didn’t hit them.

  She didn’t see where they went.

  A moment later, the car she had thought was a lure erupted in flames.

  She pushed the car back into gear and pressed on the accelerator, the wheels screaming as they failed to find enough grip before speeding away in the direction the figure had run.

  It took a second for the headlights to pick up the runner. He’d made it to the far end of the car park.

  She floored the accelerator, closing the gap between them fast, but had to slam on the brakes before she hit the verge, and slid sideways barely stopping before she hit the concrete dividing wall that separated the German DIY store from the supermarket.

  Frankie was out of the car and running.

  Her quarry was sprinting away up the grass bank. There was woodland back there. If he reached the trees she’d never find him.

  ‘Police!’ Frankie shouted, though she knew it was technically a lie.

  She had zero jurisdiction when it came to something like this, but the guy didn’t know that. Not that he slowed down. He didn’t break his stride. He ran, head down, arms and legs pumping furiously, and didn’t look back.

  She shouted again, warning that she was armed and prepared to shoot.

  That only spurred him on, with the trees opening up to engulf him in their endless shadows and secret places.

  Frankie gave it everything she had got, driving herself on.

  An instant later an engine roared into life and she knew that she had lost the race; the man had hidden a cross-country motorbike in the shelter of the trees. The roar of the engine grew more and more distant as he surged away, weaving between the trees until he was so far away it was nothing more than a mosquito buzz.

  She couldn’t chase him into the trees.

  Frankie walked back to her car, the burning vehicle now a blaze bright enough to light the entire car park.

  The roar of the raging blaze was caught up with the sound of the scream. One of the check-out women stood, backlit by the flames, staring at the burning car.

  ‘There’s someone inside!’

  Frankie ran to the car, but the heat was so intense she couldn’t get close to it. She took off her jacket and tried to use it as a shield, running at the car, but it was useless. The fire tore through the cab, consuming everything with its voracious hunger. Even so she tried again, getting to within arm’s reach of the passenger door, but the tell-tale crump of warning had her scrambling backwards as the petrol tank exploded, the shockwaves of the detonation fierce enough to punch her from her feet.

  TWELVE

  Patrick Dooley flattened the card out on his desk.

  When he had first read it, he’d screwed it up and thrown it at the wastepaper basket, missing the shot. Ten minutes later he’d retrieved it.

  He heard the rattle of her key in the lock of the front door and hurriedly pushed the note into the pocket of his dressing gown.

  Two days.

  It was two days since the package had arrived.

  Two whole days with that thing sitting in his desk.

  The housekeeper knocked politely on his study door, already opening it before he called for her to come in.

  Dooley pushed the plastic box to the back of his writing desk, pulled down the roll top, and locked it as she entered the room.

  ‘Morning, Father,’ she said, breezily. ‘Not dressed yet? Or are you planning on going back to bed? I’ll have your breakfast ready in a jiffy. Scrambled eggs sound good?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.

  He had already let a cup of tea get cold without taking a sip.

  ‘Nonsense. We all have to eat. I’ll whip up a bite, just how you like them.’

  ‘I really—’ he started to protest, but the housekeeper silenced him with a dismissive wave of her hand and a soft, ‘Whist.’ That was all it took.

  ‘All right, scrambled eggs, plenty of pepper, nice bit of farmhouse toast, and a fresh pot of tea.’

  Dooley knew better than to argue.

  The woman didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no’, which was one of the things he loved about her normally. But today wasn’t a normal day. At least by giving up she’d get on with her household chores and leave him to stew on the delivery in peace.

  ‘Let me get washed and dressed first,’ he told her. ‘I think I will take an early morning constitutional, too. Perhaps a walk to the church is in order.’

  ‘That will be nice for you,’ she smiled that ‘I’m not really listening’ smile she’d perfected over the years. The old church was the only place he felt able to find peace these days, mercifully out of earshot of her vacuum cleaner.

  Thankfully, his replacement was more than happy to allow him solitude once he took up his seat in the pews. There was always plenty for him to do for the parish, which allowed them to dispense with conversation. And today he didn’t even feel like talking to God.

  Patrick Dooley needed to be alone with his thoughts.

  The problem was all that he could think about was the contents of the plastic box locked away in his roll-top desk and the card that accompanied it.

  THIRTEEN

  Breakfast was already on the table by the time Dooley returned from his ablutions. That woman could cook. Plain and simple food, but it tasted heavenly. And she kept the house polished to within an inch of its life.

  ‘There you go, Father,’ she said as he pulled back the chair at the kitchen table. She poured a cup of Darjeeling for him, dropping a slice of lemon into the tea. It was a routine; almost a ritual.

  Coexistence was a delicate balancing act, and they knew each other so well now it was almost easy. But things were about to change.

  Looking down at the plate, he felt more hunger than he’d expected, but then there was nothing like Mrs Moore’s scrambled eggs. Carefully he cut away a corner and piled the farmhouse bread high with peppered eggs, but mid-swallow he was reminded of the thing in the plastic box and his appetite fled.

  He felt the bile in the back of his throat and took a too-big sip of the piping hot tea and choked it down so that she couldn’t see his reaction.

  He pushed the egg around the plate, mainly eating the bread, managing to secrete much of the yellow eggs into a wad of tissues which he slipped into the pocket of his jacket, which hung on the back of his chair.

  At this time of the day there was a fair chance he would find the new priest’s black Labrador lounging in the porch of the church. The dog was more than a little fond of Mrs Moore’s scrambled eggs. He wasn’t a dog man himself, but the parishioners adored the animal, and anything that helped his flock was more than fine by the old priest. More often than not he’d find someone sitting beside the dog, offering a few words of their own confession before leaving – sometimes without going inside. If talking to the dog served the same purpose as talking to God, well, he was fine with that, too, because the Lord was always listening, not just in his house of stone.

  Dooley sought out the old dog.

  The black Lab struggled to his feet, shaking itself off as Dooley walked through the lychgate and made his way along the path towards the church. The grass verge
, he noticed, was a little unkempt. Weeds grew through the cracks in the old flagstone path. Most of the stones themselves had been worn smooth by the passage of countless penitents and pilgrims over the years. The stone church itself was Norman in construction, one of the first to be built after the invasion, and had stood in various forms for nigh on a thousand years. The construction was, Dooley felt, testimony to those old masons and their unwavering faith. That they were capable of such craftsmanship when other aspects of civilization had been so backward. He smiled, seeing again the faint lettering on his favourite grave. It was its very own little tragedy, for Lily, Who Sleeps, killed by a cart going at the ungodly speed of four miles an hour. Oh, how the world had changed, and not all for the good.

  ‘Ah, morning, Tolstoy,’ Dooley said as the dog sidled up beside him. The old dog sniffed at his jacket pocket. ‘You can smell that, can you, boy?’

  He smiled as he retrieved the wad of tissue from his pocket. Tolstoy’s tail wagged faster and faster, and for just a moment he might have been a young pup again, not the worldly old soul he was. Like they both were. Without a word the dog sat and looked up at him, waiting patiently while Dooley tipped the egg onto a patch of stone for him to lap up. In a matter of seconds there was no trace of Mrs Moore’s scrambled eggs left. He ruffled the old dog’s fur. ‘There’s a good boy.’

  ‘Are you leading him astray again, Patrick?’

  Dooley looked up to see his replacement standing in the open doorway, a shock of white hair against the semi-darkness of the church’s interior. Michael O’Hare was barely into his forties, but the good Lord had gifted him with the gravitas of a much older man. Dooley would never admit it, but he’d had his doubts about the man when the bishop had appointed him as his successor, but Michael had more than proven himself to be a good man and shown his commitment to the parish time and time again. In this day and age Dooley had, he felt, reasonably worried that the young man was some kind of career cleric, keen to progress through the ranks of the Church without a genuine affection for his parishioners. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Young Father Michael, as everyone called him behind his back, had fallen in love with the place, and it in turn had fallen in love with him. Given a choice, Dooley doubted his replacement would ever leave. He might not have a choice.

  ‘Caught in flagrante,’ Dooley said, with a wry grin. He screwed up the tissue again and buried it in his pocket. ‘How about we keep this our little secret? Just you, me, and Tolstoy here? There’s no need for Mrs Moore to know, is there?’

  ‘How much is it worth to you?’ the other man asked with a wink.

  ‘Father O’Hare, are you soliciting a bribe? Tsk, tsk.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Father Dooley. Rest assured, your secret is safe with me.’

  For the long silence between heartbeats Dooley thought the other man knew and felt sick. But of course he didn’t. This place was his refuge. The problem was that now the memories were uncorked they insisted on flooding back, and there was nowhere to hide from them. Not here. Not even in this sanctuary. He breathed deeply of the hypocrisy that was the foundation of his faith and wished with all the fervour of a zealot that the damned package had never arrived. He could have died happily without reading the two-word message on the card. How could he forget?

  His fingers felt for the card in his trouser pocket. He thought about requesting the sanctity of the confessional to unburden himself but that wasn’t fair on the other man; it wouldn’t change anything, and realistically just meant someone else had to bear his shame.

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘I’m just heading back to the vicarage for a cuppa.’ He nodded towards the sandstone house that had been Dooley’s home before his retirement had seen him move into the cottage down the way, which admittedly was better suited to his needs, even if it still didn’t feel like home. ‘Can I tempt you?’

  ‘Not this morning,’ Dooley said. ‘I was rather hoping for a little quiet time.’

  ‘Need a chat with the boss?’ O’Hare lifted his gaze skyward.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ O’Hare said, stepping aside. ‘Come over when you’re done, if you like. Bring Tolstoy back with you.’

  The man placed a hand on Dooley’s upper arm and gave it the lightest of squeezes before heading off towards the road.

  The Labrador looked up at Dooley but showed no sign of going after its master. It understood.

  ‘Just you and me then, fella. I guess you’d better come in.’ Without hesitation, the old dog walked straight to the back of the vestry and curled up on a piece of carpet that had been placed there for that very purpose. Dooley took a moment to just drink in the calm of his old church. He had spent so much of his life within these walls. He could only delay it for so long; it was time to make his peace with God. Then, and only then, could he come to terms with what he must do next.

  He walked slowly towards the altar and knelt slowly, lowering himself to his knees in front of it. He closed his eyes, hoping to feel the familiar presence of the Almighty, but there was nothing, no matter how fervently he prayed, not even the slightest sign that anyone was listening. This was not his sin to confess. His failure was simply one of inaction. He should have done something. But it was all so very, very long ago now. He had lived with that guilt for most of his life.

  That package had undone everything about this fragile life he had built for himself. Now all he felt was sadness. He wasn’t the man he had always believed himself to be.

  Dooley rose unsteadily to his feet, his knees complaining as he did so, and with effort took a seat in the front row of pews. He sat for a full minute in silence, not in prayer, before he pulled the card out of his pocket.

  He had lost count of the number of times he had read it. It didn’t matter how many, to be fair, he hadn’t misread or misunderstood the message. There was no room for interpretation or mistakes.

  He knew what it meant.

  The message was simple, ‘Memini Bonn.’ Today’s date had followed those two words along with a time and destination; the coffee bar in a quaint little cafe down in Epsom itself.

  It was too late for him to make the journey now, meaning he would have to face whatever consequences the anonymous sender intended.

  It had taken him a moment to realize what the object was bobbing within the fluid in the plastic container, but as it rolled in the liquid it seemed to be looking at him. He had barely been able to keep the vomit down long enough for him to reach the bathroom.

  He should have rung the police straight away; it would have been the sensible thing to do. But that would have meant telling them that he was afraid and what he was afraid of. Which meant explaining what he had been party to. It didn’t matter that he had been an unwilling observer.

  That was why he had been sent the eye.

  He had seen and done nothing to stop it.

  That confession would have branded him for ever the man who did nothing.

  Maybe it was finally the time for the truth to come out?

  It was only a pity that he could not bear the shame of being around to own his part in it. Let them blame a dead man. Let them cast their stones. Let them damn the witness.

  There was a reason he had come to this place and it was not that he thought of it as home. He had come here because, if he could muster the strength to go through with it, it would be O’Hare who found his body, not Mrs Moore. She did not need to see that.

  FOURTEEN

  Frankie Varg woke to the unmistakable noises of sex. It beat the dreams of burning cars that had haunted her all night. Thin walls and tired mattresses betrayed the lovers. She assumed it was an affair, one last urgent fuck before going back to real life. Good for them, she thought. She turned on the radio to give them a little privacy. The hotel gradually came to life; the sound of doors opening and closing, the rattle of pipes and splash of running water in neighbouring rooms created their own little theme tune. The d
ouble glazing wasn’t thick enough to mask the sound of a delivery van arriving beneath her window. She could smell the fresh bread and cinnamon buns from her room.

  It had been a long night. She’d finished too late to make the drive back to her own apartment and had no great urge to sleep in a familiar bed. That wasn’t her. She craved practicality over familiarity, so by the time she had done everything she wanted to do the only logical choice was crash in the city and make an early start. It was purely practical. There was no one waiting for her back home, no cat to feed, and her plants were all plastic.

  She kept a duffle bag in her car with a change of clothes and a few basic toiletries in it. She’d stayed here so many times several of the staff knew her by name.

  She’d slept fitfully, if it wasn’t the burning car it was a surreal warping of the post-mortem that plagued her dreams. The macabre incisions, the pale, pale skin, and the victim lying there, eyes glazed over, pencil-thin lips blue and begging for her to find her killer. It was an old phrase, cops being speakers for the dead, and somehow it had infiltrated her dream giving it a weird horror-movie quality. There had been no real need for her to attend the post-mortem beyond it being the right thing to do. Frankie was big on doing the right thing. Perception could make every difference in the world, especially when you spent half of your day treading on the toes of local law-enforcement agencies. She didn’t want to give them an excuse to make her job more difficult than it had to be. She heard them talk, how she was a cold bitch who thought she was better than them, and that was the nice stuff.

  It didn’t matter how many times she attended an observation, it always had the same effect on her. They said you never forgot your first. It was the same with corpses. Her first post-mortem she’d been standing less than a metre from the body when the first incision had been made. But that wasn’t the thing she remembered, it was the sound as the pathologist used the rib-cutters to sheer through the dead man’s ribs and then spread the bones so that he could get at the no longer vital organs inside. That sound was like no other.