Catching Up With Murder - Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Mr Winter, I presume?” enquired the stranger standing ill at ease at Winter’s front door, an earring in the shape of a cross dangling from one ear. 
     Winter nodded, thoroughly taken aback.  Carol had been kept in hospital several days due to some problem with her blood pressure but it had been resolved and he was due to collect her later that afternoon. He had only just returned from the shops and been stuffing the fridge when the doorbell rang. Seconds later, he found himself face to face with the young man in the photograph.

     “I’m Harry Smith. Sadie Chapman said you wanted to see me. Well, here I am so take a good look.”

“You had better come in.” Harry hung back. “You haven’t come all this way just to stand and chat on my doorstep, surely?” He waved Harry inside and showed his reluctant guest into the kitchen. “What can I get you?  There’s tea, coffee, fruit juice or maybe something a little stronger?”

“Tea please,” then, “Have you got anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“I dare say I can rustle you up a bacon butty or two. How does that sound?”

“Sounds wicked!” Harry sat down and made himself at home. 

Winter looked for signs of the lively toddler he had played with years ago but saw none. “How old are you Harry?”

“I’m twenty-seven…why?”  He glanced up from staring at his hands in time to glimpse a frown flitting across Winter’s leathery face before, almost instantly, it resumed its usual impassive expression. He laughed aloud. “Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do.”

“So, how much do you remember?” Winter sprinkled some sunflower oil into the frying pan and retrieved two back rashers of bacon from the fridge. They were sizzling away and he had made them both a mug of tea before Harry made any answer.

“Not a lot,” was the slow, candid reply, “Sometimes I think I remember things but I can’t be sure they haven’t just come into my head, if you know what I mean.”  Winter thought he did. “I remember falling. I remember that all the time. It’s like dropping into a pit. Something’s waiting for me at the bottom but all I can see is its eyes. Then someone hauls me up and dumps me somewhere.” He paused a while and sipped at his tea. “I get panicky a lot, have nightmares too. But things are better since I’ve been with Sadie. She’s the best.”

“A fine woman,” Winter agreed, although he could have wished she had called to warn him of Harry’s impending visit

“The best,” Harry repeated. “She wanted to phone and let you know I was on my way,” he added as if reading Winter’s thoughts, “but I wouldn’t let her in case I changed my mind.” 

“But you didn’t.”

“Only about half a dozen times,” Harry laughed, lightly enough, but. Winter’s finer sensibilities detected a hollow ring to the sound.

“So what made you decide to take the plunge?” Winter was genuinely intrigued.

Harry Smith gave a shrug that meant everything and nothing. “I owe it to Sadie, to both of us. I love her, you see.”  Winter was moved by the admission, made though it was between mouthfuls of bacon buttie. “Can I see the photo?” he asked after another long pause. Winter fetched and handed it to him. Harry stopped eating long enough to digest the slightly blurred image in front of him. Handing it back without comment, he promptly went to work, with relish, on a second sandwich.

“Is that you?” Winter thought he had waited long enough.

“It could be. In fact I’d go so far as to say, yes, it probably is me.” What did you say his name was?”

“Liam Brady.”

“Liam Brady, Liam Brady, Liam Brady…” he muttered over and over as if trying out the name on his tongue. At the same time, he kept twisting a signet ring on the index finger of his right hand. “Sorry, the name doesn’t mean a thing.” 

Suddenly conscious that he was under intense observation, Harry ceased toying with the ring and gave a short, embarrassed laugh.  “Sometimes when I touch it I remember things,” he tried to explain, “Nothing concrete, just images. All a bit of a muddle really but...” He shrugged. “Something might ring a bell one day and, well, who knows?”

Winter was both moved and impressed by the way this young man appeared to be coping quite remarkably with the awful trauma of memory loss. “What else do you remember apart from the falling sensation?” he proceeded gently.

“It’s like I said, not a lot. My first clear memory is hitching a lift from this truck driver. Then I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew we were at some service station not far from Canterbury, only I didn’t know that at the time. I went for a pee and when I came back the truckie had gone without me, the bastard.  So I asked around, got my bearings and walked the rest of the way. I met Sadie in the Dane John Gardens. The rest, as they say, is history.” He managed a lopsided grin. “It’s all the history Harry Smith has anyway.” He paused then, “These butties are delicious, any chance of another?  Another cuppa would go down a treat too.” Winter set about obliging. “Now, tell me all about this Liam character.”

Winter told Harry little more than he had already told Sadie. Certain that she would have passed it on, he kept to the bare facts. “I’m collecting his mother from hospital shortly and bringing her back here. She can tell you anything else you want to know.”

Harry leapt to his feet, wide-eyed and fearful. “His mother, you say? Hell, I can’t cope with that! Suppose I am this Liam and haven’t a clue who she is? And I won’t, you know, I can practically swear to it. It will be awful, for both of us. I knew it was a mistake to come here, I just knew it!”

“Hold your horses.” Winter spoke quickly and quietly albeit in a commanding tone that caused Harry Smith to freeze on the spot. “Carol Brady is not only a very nice woman but she’s also as tough as they come. If she can handle the situation, however things turn out, I’m damn sure you can. Besides, she has as much right to know if you’re her son as you do, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I suppose.” Harry, still on his feet, looked doubtful. “Part of me wants to remember and another part of me is scared stiff of what I might find out about myself.”

“That’s only natural. But, trust me, I have a nose for bad news and you’re not it, whoever you are.”

Harry wrestled with his conscience and almost said, “I think I may have killed someone” but thought better of it. Instead, he let anger cast his worst recurring nightmare to the back of his mind. “I appreciate the vote of confidence but, with all due respect, what do you know about it? You may have been a copper once and next to God almighty but you’re no better than the rest of us now. Your nose is no damn better at smelling things out than mine. And if I can’t suss myself out, I’m bloody sure you can’t.”

The two men glared at one another. Winter turned away, scooped a rasher of bacon from the frying pan, all but threw it on to a piece of bread and folded it. “I hope it chokes you,” he muttered.

“If that’s all it takes to please you...” Harry accepted the sandwich, only to pause in mid-bite as Winter burst into a guffaw.

For a moment, Harry looked nonplussed. Then the sulky expression broke into sheepish grin and he sat down again.  He remained adamant, however, that he would not go to the hospital.  “No way am I going there!”  He swallowed nervously. “I need more time to get ready for this. So does she, I reckon,” a rising note of desperation in his voice. “If I’m Liam Brady and I don’t recognize her from Eve, it’s going to be rough on both of us.  At least I have some idea how rough. She won’t have a clue. You’ll have to spell it out for her.”

“Carol knows the score.”

“Nobody knows the score, believe me!  You have to make her see that I can’t be what I’m not. I’m Harry Smith. If it turns out any different, that doesn’t change a thing. Not for me, anyhow. I’ll still be Harry Smith. She’s going to have to get used to that if, well...whatever,” he finished lamely. “Don’t worry about me doing a runner. I’ll still be here when you get back. That is, unless you don’t trust me with the family silver,” he added with a grin.

“I wouldn’t bet on the family silver fetching much, I’m afraid,” Winter had to admit. “Besides, if you were to take as much as a dish cloth from this house I’d see you arrested and charged before the day is out. I may be retired but...”

“Once a copper always a copper, eh…?”

“Something like that,” Winter growled, more by way of a gentle warning than a threat, and left the house minutes later with only a few reservations still dragging on his stomach muscles. Sadie Chapman had trusted young Harry Smith, he reminded his doubtful alter ego, so why shouldn’t he?

At the hospital, Carol took the news with mixed feelings. “I don’t know if I can handle this, Freddy. And look at me, I’m a mess.”

“You look fine. Just don’t be too disappointed if it turns out he’s not Liam or, if he is, he doesn’t recognize you.”

“How could I be disappointed if he is?” she retorted. “It will be a bloody miracle.”

They drove back to Watford in an uncomfortable silence.  Winter rang the bell to give Harry some warning, turned the key and entered. “Harry?” he called out. But there was no reply. His heart sank. “Harry?” he called out again. “Shit!” he muttered and walked through to the kitchen, Carol close behind.

“He’s gone!” she wailed, “I knew it was all too good to be true. Damn it, Freddy, I just knew it! Where do you keep your booze?”  He turned, led her back to a spacious lounge and poured them both a large whiskey. “What now?” she asked tearfully. But Winter had no ready answer and returned to the kitchen. Something had caught his eye on the table without quite registering. He looked again. Next to the fruit bowl, lay Harry Smith’s signet ring.

“It’s his, its Liam’s,” squealed Carol when he showed her. “I gave it to him for his eighteenth. Oh, shit, Freddy, what are we going to do?”

“We wait.” Winter’s expression was grim. “We sit tight and wait. My guess is that he left it here to let us know he’ll be back for it.”

“So why not just leave a note?”

“Perhaps there wasn’t time?” he suggested. “If you ask me, something caused our young friend to run off in a big hurry and this was a last minute gesture to let us know he’ll be back.”

“Something or someone…?”  It was Carol who put the unspoken thought into words as it flashed, simultaneously, across both their minds.

“We need to drive over to Camden and pick up your things,” he reminded her.

Carol shook her head. “It’s like you said, we sit tight and wait.”

“We can’t be sure when he’ll be back or even if,” he put it to her gently, “but if it makes you feel any better, I’ll pin a note to the front door. We can be there and back in a couple of hours or less.”

“We’ll talk about it later, alright?  Besides, that’s your third double so you can’t drive for a bit anyway. Where do your keep your coffee?” They returned to the kitchen.

Why was it, Winter had often asked himself, a kitchen invariably struck people as not only the most comfortable room in the house but also the safest? “Me included,” he mumbled into his beard, tugging at it irritably.  It was a soft notion and he wasn’t ordinarily given to such fancies.  He could only put it down to a symptom of the anxiety from which his GP insisted he was suffering.  That reminded him to go into the bedroom and hunt for his tablets, leaving Carol, sprawled on a chair, to peer at the ring’s unusual snake-like design through an ugly yellow mist.

He had already resolved to leave for Camden Town without her.

“Everything’s packed in a case and a holdall just inside my bedroom. All you have to do is get a toothbrush and a few odds ‘n’ sods from the bathroom,” she told him with a yawn.

“How will I know what’s what?”

“You’re a copper, aren’t you? Use your loaf.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay here on your own?”

“I’ll be fine. Now, sod off and let me get my head together…again,” she muttered ruefully. Winter took the hint and left.

Carol sat for a while then wandered from room to room, vaguely taking notice of what was what and where. The irony of her coming to live under the same roof as Freddy Winter, however temporary and platonic the arrangement, hit her with the force of an express train. She tumbled on to a bed in the spare room, burst out laughing and was still laughing when she heard a banging at the back door.  Sitting bolt upright, heart leaping to her mouth, Carol listened again. The banging was repeated several times. Suppose it was Liam? Her legs refused to move. It crossed her mind that it could even be the mystery person who had put her in hospital.  But she dismissed that thought outright. No one knew she was here, except...Liam.

The banging seemed to continue for ages before Carol felt some life return to her legs, got up and fetched recovered the whiskey bottle from the lounge before walking shakily through to the kitchen.  The person who has been banging on the door now had his face pressed against the window. His eyes lit up when he saw her and he tapped on the pane.

 “Liam!” Carol tried to shout but could only manage a throaty whisper and started, panic-stricken, at the unmistakable face of her son. A native willpower came to her rescue. He would realize who she was of course. Winter had, after all, told him to expect her.  In vain, though, she looked for any sign of even the faintest recognition in those familiar blue-grey eyes. “Come on, pull yourself together, girl!” she told herself. Gritting her teeth, she unlocked the door and opened it.  He entered, careful to avoid her eyes.

“Where’s Fred Winter?  I thought he’d be here?”

Carol swallowed hard, eventually found her voice and explained the situation in a small, choking voice she’d never have recognized as her own if she hadn’t been vaguely aware her lips were moving. “He’ll be back soon,” she told her son.

“You must be Carol, Liam’s mother?” Hearing him speak his own name as if it belonged to complete stranger was too much for Carol. She sank into a chair and reached for the whiskey.

“Can I have some of that?”  She pushed the bottle towards him. He grabbed a tumbler from the draining board, took her at her word and sat down at the round pine table. “I’m Harry Smith,” holding out his hand. Carol hesitated, took it and closed her eyes.

To feel his touch, the living warmth of him was overwhelming. She forced herself to open her eyes. “You’re not Harry Smith, you’re Liam Brady and you’re my son,” she said slowly.

“I’m Harry Smith,” he repeated, snatched away his hand and took another drink. “You have to understand. I’ve learned to live with Harry Smith. I can’t suddenly become someone else. I don’t know you, I’m sorry.” He lifted his chin and met her disbelieving gaze. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“You need help, a doctor...”

Harry leapt to his feet. “No doctors!  I’m not ill. Okay, so I can’t remember things. But that doesn’t make me some kind of head case and no one’s going tell me different, no way!” He seemed taken aback by his own strength of feeling, as if the words themselves had spilled out of their own accord, and promptly sat down again. He reached for the gold signet ring and fidgeted with it a while before putting it on, taking it off, putting it on again. “I get pictures in my mind,” he told her in a voice rippling with anguish, “But they’re all a blur and they don’t come with any memory, just weird feelings I can’t explain.  There are good pictures and bad pictures. I have good feelings about some of them and bad feelings about others. It’s like the feelings put words in my mouth I can’t actually relate to but I know they’re a part of me because I can relate to the feelings…well, sort of, if you know what I mean.” He kept the ring on this time and reached for the bottle again.

“Do you have a good feeling about Fred Winter?” she found herself asking. He nodded. “And me, how do you feel about me?”

Harry took his time. “Are you sure I’m your son?”

“I’m sure.”

He shrugged. “I have a good feeling about you,” he admitted, “not like the woman who was here before. I knew she couldn’t be you because Fred Winter said you’re a good person and I just knew she was up to some mischief.”

“What woman?” Carol forced herself to pay attention.

“Called a while back, she did, about half an hour after Fred left. She was with a big guy, shaved head. They said Fred had been in some kind of accident and they’d come to give me a lift to the hospital.  The woman got in a flap and I couldn’t think straight. But something wasn’t right. You sort of know, don’t you?”  Carol nodded grimly.  “I couldn’t stop them inviting themselves inside so I showed them into the lounge, said how I’d be back in a sec and legged it out the back way.”

“Leaving your ring behind….”

“I didn’t want Fred to think I’d done a bunk.”

“Even though you knew he was bringing someone back with him whom you really didn’t want to see?”

“I never said that. I did want to see you. I was shit scared, that’s all.”

“You and me both,” she confessed with a quiet smile. He smiled back. At least, she told herself, they were making a start. “Well...Harry...why don’t you tell me all about yourself…as much as you know anyhow?”

“And you’ll tell me about Liam?” She nodded. “No hassle, no promises?”

“No hassle, no promises,” she agreed and held out her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you Harry Smith.” He grinned, took hers in his own and they shook hands warmly.

He helped himself to another whiskey. Carol did the same and thought her heart would break.

..................

While, unbeknown to him, mother and son were establishing an encouraging if somewhat strained rapport, Fred Winter let himself into Carol’s Brady’s flat with her key.  Entering the bedroom, he immediately spotted the holdall, dumped it on the bed and unzipped it before heading for the bathroom. After collecting what toiletries he guessed she would need, he returned to the bedroom and stuffed them into the holdall. His mind was elsewhere, his actions reflex rather than properly thought through. Aside from being in a hurry to get back to Watford, he remained both puzzled and disturbed by Harry Smith’s disappearance.

He could well understand the young man’s reservations about meeting Carol. It was a scary enough prospect for anyone to be suddenly confronted with someone who may or may not prove to be their mother and, even if she did, was unlikely to mean much to them anyway. Yet he’d felt certain Harry was up for it and would be waiting for them. Besides, why leave the signet ring behind since it obviously meant a lot to him?  Could it be, as he wanted to believe, some sort of sign that the young man would be back for it…or just sheer carelessness? The latter made more sense. Harry may simply have panicked about meeting Carol and made a run for it.

So why, Winter continued to fret, did he have the feeling there was more to it than that? 

He did not hear sounds of movement behind him before it was too late. Barely had his instincts registered imminent danger when something came crashing down against the back of his head and sent him sprawling, unconscious, across the bed.

“He’ll be out cold for awhile yet, that’s for sure,” commented the tall, thickset figure leaning over Fred Winter’s limp form. He felt for a pulse, uttered an ambiguous grunt and heaved the detective’s long legs on to the bed.

“Have I killed him, Daz?” whimpered the woman beside him, shaking like a leaf.

“You’d know soon enough if you had,” his companion retorted acidly, “You’d be like the cat that’s got the cream, you know you would, not a near nervous wreck.” 

“I had no choice,” wailed Cotter.

“You mean you couldn’t resist having a go,” growled Darren “Daz” Horton.

Neither saw Winter open one eye before drifting back into semi-consciousness, voices echoing in his head and making it throb all the more. Words, parts of words and sentences were like additional blows pounding at him from all sides. He felt as if he were dangling over a precipice and clinging for dear life to a rope someone must have thrown him although he could see no one.  Strangely enough, it was a relief to let go and free-fall into an all-consuming darkness, the more welcome for its absolute silence.

 “That’s not fair,” protested Sarah Manners, “You know I’m not a violent person.”

“Really, my turtle dove?  So what do you call walloping someone on the back of the head with a candlestick, doing them a favour?  Somehow, I don’t think so,” he chortled softly.

“I had no choice. If he’d seen me...”

“But he didn’t and probably wouldn’t have if you hadn’t gone into a flap as usual.”

“Sorry Daz,” the small, sturdy woman with neat, short black hair was instantly contrite.

“Any sign of Liam?” 

The woman shook her head, wide-eyed and apprehensive in anticipation of what he might do to her once they got home. “You don’t think he’s gone to the police?” she simpered. (He liked it when she did that). If he recognized me...”

“Of course he didn’t recognize you, you idiot. If he had, he’d have had a few choice things to say before doing a runner,” the tall man retorted while continuing to study the unconscious Winter. “Right now, I’m more concerned about our friend here. If he wasn’t a cop, I’d be tempted to...well, no point in speculating. Come on, my turtle dove, the best thing we can do now is get out of here pronto.”

“Oh? And just where did you have in mind?”

“Home, James, of course. We need to have a good think about how we sort this mess.”

“I still can’t believe Liam’s alive,” muttered the small woman as she followed him out of the house and back to the car.

“It’s a trifle inconvenient, true, but we’ll sort it. Don’t we always?”

“You will, Daz, you’ll sort it.” She flung him an adoring glance. “You always do. Where would I be without you?”

“You don’t want to know. Now, shut up and fasten your seat belt. Why do I always have to tell you belt up?”

“Because I’m such a hopeless case,” the woman groaned and did as she was told.

“Too right, you are!” Daz Horton muttered again with feeling as he reached up to slightly adjust the rear-view mirror.

They drove most of the way back to Monk’s Tallow without exchanging a word. At Monk’s Porter, they turned off as Horton decided they would take the scenic route via the Devil’s Elbow.  His companion flung him an old-fashioned look and gave a little squeal but said nothing. Horton made no comment but squeezed her thigh until she yelped, running a hand down one black fishnet leg even as he negotiated the notorious bend. Safely out of danger’s way, he took a sharp left turn and drove a few yards up a dirt track before braking.

“Oh, no, Daz, not tonight, please. I’m whacked.”

“You’ll be more than whacked if you mess me about,” Horton growled, “I’m in no mood to be messed about. Haven’t you messed me about enough today? You do know what you’ve done?  Winter’s going to want some answers, right?” She nodded, lower lip trembling, eyes shining, “That means he’ll be asking questions, right? he yelled. 

“Right, Daz,” she whimpered, “I’m sorry, Daz.”

“You will be,” he promised. A sardonic leer lit up the long, bony face and gave it extra substance. “Thanks to you, we’ve got another one to sort besides your toy boy and his ma.”

“There was nothing between Liam and me, how could there be?”

“You fancied him.”

“I never did!”

“You know I’m right, aren’t I always?” His passenger hung her head and made no reply. “Get in the back set and pull your knickers down,” barked Horton, the adrenalin already pumping through his veins.

Sarah Manners meekly did as she was told. Much later, examining her bruised face in the mirror of a dressing table, she fancied she could hear the ironic comments her colleagues at the local library would be sure to pass on Monday. “Another door, Sarah?” they’d say, “You and your doors, Sarah!” they would snigger and this would carry on until they tired of it. But they knew better than to cross her. They would give her a wide berth and let her get on with the admin while they kept Joe Public happy.

 It was not so bad, being a librarian. She had thought so for some years now. True, it would not have been her choice of career had she been free to choose. She hadn’t been, of course. Hadn’t she been a victim of circumstances all her life?

She sighed, opened a drawer and studied a faded photograph she took from it. A young man with black hair and a twinkle in each eye smiled up at her and gave her goose bumps. Letting rip with a humourless laugh, she replaced the photograph and slammed the drawer shut. “You may not be the handsomest devil, Ralph Cotter,” she told the face in the mirror, “but you’ve always had charisma. You still do, right?”

Sarah Manners, alias Ralph Cotter, made no answer and merely grinned from ear to ear but couldn’t help wincing as bruised ribs gave a nasty twinge.

To be continued on Friday