A Death to Remember Read Free

walls, and suddenly I was afraid. I was a stranger to myself. This could not be me, this hot, furious and lost man, shouting my hatred–and yes, it was hatred–at Tony Clayton. I gripped the edge of the desk and stared down at those pristine books, placed there to mock me, and hung on. I had been told to relax, not to allow myself to become involved with stress. My head pounded, and for a moment the desk surface blurred. I could have sat back on to the swivel chair behind me, but somehow pride held me firm. Then I looked up.
    ‘ You could ask your accountant for the old books, then maybe I’d get some sort of picture.’
    Still his voice seemed to be probing. ‘I thought you’d ask him.’
    I sighed. ‘When I was an officer of the DHSS I could’ve done that. But now I’ve got no authority at all. I don’t understand this. What does your wife say? What is it that you think is wrong?’
    He relaxed suddenly. ‘It’s a feeling.’ He shrugged, then walked across to stand glumly staring out of the window. His mood had changed. ‘All this – in only a year.’ He didn’t mean what he was looking at, the roof of the corrugated iron structure and the dreary pool. I knew what he meant.
    ‘ Have you asked your wife?’
    ‘ My wife isn’t here.’ His voice was dull, indistinct. ‘She’s disappeared.’
    Then, for a long minute, there was silence between us. I was aware that he had not brought me there to examine his books, but simply in order to make that statement. To me. Why me? I looked at his profile, the jaw hard now, none of the weakness I’d seen full face. I ventured:
    ‘ How d’you mean, disappeared?’
    ‘ What d’you think I mean?’ he snapped, glancing sideways. Then, more quietly: ‘She visited me regularly, you know, with news how things were going, the improvements she was making, how much Michael Orton was helping her, and I got not one single hint...’
    ‘ Who did you say?’
    ‘ Our accountant, Michael Orton.’
    ‘ Oh God!’
    I was aware he had my arm, and was steadying me. I thought I was laughing at the irony of it, that Orton should intrude on me there, but apparently the sound I was making didn’t give the impression of amusement. I must have known that Orton had been his accountant, but I had completely forgotten.
    ‘ What’s the matter?’ He shook my arm.
    ‘ Nothing. He’s just the one accountant I wouldn’t want to approach. Not for you, not for me.’
    Michael Orton was the man who was now married to my ex-wife, Valerie.
    I looked steadily at him. ‘You were saying?’
    ‘ Are you listening?’
    ‘ I’m listening.’ But remembering. That damned memory, it worked well enough on the things I’d have preferred to forget, and which now came flooding back. Such as Michael Orton, who’d always managed to convey to me his contempt whilst smiling at me, and managed to condescend with every second word. I remembered the first time I’d met him – and Valerie, as it happened...’
    Clayton was saying: ‘...she was intending to pick me up at the prison, but she didn’t come. Nobody came. In the end, I had to get a taxi to the station and find my own way. And nobody here knew anything about it...about her. There was no note, no message. The last entry in the books is the day before I came out.’
    He stopped. I opened a book and checked that point. ‘Friday the seventeenth?’ I asked.
    ‘ I came out on the Saturday.’
    ‘ Yes.’ I didn’t know what else to say. I sat. He stood. We were silent. At last I asked the obvious.
    ‘ Have you told the police?’
    ‘ No.’
    ‘ Why not?’
    ‘ I was in for GBH,’ he said stubbornly. ‘You know what that means? Grievous Bodily Harm.’
    ‘ I know what it feels like.’ Which was a lie. I didn’t remember what it felt like.
    ‘ Ha!’ he snarled in disgust. ‘You don’t have to be funny.’
    ‘ Sorry. So...what if you were?’
    ‘ A chap comes out of prison after a sentence of GBH, and straightaway he says his