Cambridge Blue (12 page)

He knew he’d created a retro-custom of a yet more retro car. There had even been a phase when he’d been tempted to trade it in for a PT Cruiser, but then he realized that could suck him into a scene full of all-too-earnest enthusiasts, so he’d decided to stick with the little beast he’d already created. And he’d been glad of it, especially at moments like these. He slid down in the seat and tilted his head back, still watching his car through part-closed eyes. It had the same effect as unwinding in a hot bath; his thoughts floated at their own speed, taking their own routes and pulling others along with them. Bryn wasn’t a deep thinker, and he never had been. More than that, he was conscious of a distrust of contemplation and where it might lead. He wanted to release two particular thoughts, and he hated the way they now seemed to be linked, and kept coming back, hand in hand, to bother him.

He gazed up towards his car and almost let these thoughts go. If a face hadn’t suddenly appeared in the small window in the workshop’s concertina door, he might have succeeded. But probably not . . .

Gary found O’Brien’s straight away. It was one of those places that he’d never really noticed, but equally knew he’d seen it countless times before. It was brick-built with navy-blue steel doors and an apex roof covered in something which looked suspiciously like corrugated asbestos. There was no ‘Closed’ sign, just one with a name and telephone number, and a second board at one corner which read ‘No Smoking’. Underneath it there was a collection of stubbed-out cigarette ends; Gary wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

The workshop had all its other windows high up on the side walls, near to the roof, so that only the six-by-nine Perspex pane in the door was within reach. He cupped his hands and tried to peer inside, but the evening sunlight and scratches made it cloudy, and he knew that wiping it would make no difference. He tried anyway, ever the optimist.

He kept his face close to the aperture for longer the second time, and shapes gradually began to pick themselves out. Enough weak daylight made it through the windows for him to see the roof of a white van, and a second car raised up on a ramp. In one of the lighter patches, he spotted a year planner and then, further across, the familiar red crate-like shape of a Snap-On tool kit.

Then he thought he saw movement and, illogically, pulled back slightly. When he looked again, a figure was approaching the door. Gary stepped to one side and waited.

Gary knew, as soon as the door clanked open, that he’d found his former classmate. It was a funny thing; if he’d been asked to describe Bryn before seeing him, he might well have replied, ‘I can’t remember.’ In truth, he had a vague recollection of fair hair, a slight build, and perpetually scuffed shoes – hardly the stuff of a positive ID. But, confronted with the man himself, a whole barrelload of details flooded back: the eyebrows that always looked slightly raised, the single piercing in the right lobe, now unoccupied, the head tilted in interest or defiance, depending on interpretation, and the serious set of the mouth which accompanied it.

The slight built had been replaced by broad shoulders, but the boots were still scuffed, and it was soon evident that he still had that habit of either pushing his hands into his pockets or leaning against something whenever he began to speak. Today it was pockets, Gary noticed. The teachers used to have a field day pulling him up on that habit each time they were busy pulling him up on something else – which had been often.

‘We’re closed,’ he announced.

‘I know.’ Gary took a moment to continue. Despite convincing himself that the odds of finding the right Bryn were quite good, he’d only actually visualized meeting the wrong one; now he knew he was about to hear something completely unrehearsed coming out of his mouth.

He decided to steer clear of Lorna Spence. ‘I went to school with you,’ he began. How inane did that sound? ‘At Chesterton Primary.’

‘Congratulations.’ Bryn raised one eyebrow very slightly but didn’t smile.

Gary had recognized Bryn, partly because he knew who he was looking for. Bryn, on the other hand, clearly didn’t have a clue who this was.

‘I’m Gary Goodhew, you probably don’t remember . . .’ He left his words to trail off.

Bryn shrugged. ‘Remember the name. What’s up?’

Gary nodded towards the workshop beyond. ‘I need to ask you something, but not out here.’

‘I’m just leaving.’

‘Five minutes.’

Gary saw Bryn hesitate before he glanced back into the workshop, then he slid the door closed.

‘Five minutes,’ Gary repeated.

Bryn gave in. ‘OK, I’ve got time for a quick drink. The Salisbury’s just round the corner.’

They walked in silence for the first hundred yards, and Gary wondered how he should approach the subject. Lorna Spence may have just used Bryn to repair her car and, if so, what next? Yet Gary was well aware that anything he now found out should form part of an official statement, not a friendly chat over a pint.

Bryn broke the silence first. ‘By the way, I’m not up for a school reunion, if that’s what you’re here about. Not my thing at all.’ He said it in an easy way, the way Gary remembered, as though the answer didn’t really matter, except that his eyes flickered as they watched for the reply, and it was clear to Gary that the answer he gave was actually very important.

Gary deflected the question. ‘Maybe you need to hit thirty before you start getting nostalgic.’

The Salisbury Arms stood on the other side of the road. Bryn darted across in front of a car, leaving Gary trailing a few yards behind. He figured, however, there was no need to hurry, and reached the bar just as Bryn was being given change for his pint of lager. Gary ordered a Stella, and followed Bryn to the table he’d selected at the far end of the room.

The pub was genuinely traditional, not just styled to look that way. The beams and old floors had really aged with the building, rather than arriving there as prefabricated panels. Bryn sat on a long bench, his back to the end wall, while Gary chose a square chair that looked like it belonged in a dining room. The table itself had been converted from a treadle sewing machine, and the word ‘Singer’ was curled into the metal footplate.

‘Ever see anyone from school?’ he began.

Bryn shook his head. ‘I remember you, though.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I thought your sister was cute. Then you left and we were told you’d both got scholarships to some private school.’

Gary smiled: funny how such rumours turned the truth into something else. Funny, too, how Bryn remembered his sister. ‘Debbie probably was cute,’ he conceded, ‘but I think she was only ten at the time.’ They both paused to drink. ‘I’m with the police now,’ he added, with no change of tone.

‘Ah.’ It was said with neither surprise nor alarm, but just as a recogniton of a matter of fact. ‘I see.’

‘Do you know a Lorna Spence?’ Gary continued quietly.

‘A little, I think.’

‘You think?’

Bryn rubbed imaginary sweat from his forehead with the flat of his right hand, further smudging the greasy streaks that already marked the exposed skin right up into his hairline. Gary noted the raw patches on Bryn’s knuckles, and wondered what object he’d hit.

Bryn thought for a few seconds, then answered Gary’s question with one of his own. ‘Do you mean “Do I know her”, or do you mean “Did I know her”?’

‘What makes you think she’s dead?’

Bryn dropped his hand on to the tabletop, covering a Guinness beer mat with his palm, then spread his fingers out like he was trying to come up with five good reasons. He managed two. ‘You lot found a woman’s body this morning, right?’

Gary just nodded.

‘It’s been on the radio all day. Then you start to search a flat in Rolfe Street. Know how many flats there are down there?’

Gary didn’t know, but he hadn’t noticed many, that was for sure. ‘It’s mostly houses, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe there’s more, but I can only recall
two
flats, Lorna’s and the empty one underneath. So when you turn up asking if I know her, what else am I going to think?’

‘Can you tell me when you last saw her?’ Gary asked, wondering whether there was a record for the number of times someone could keep answering a question with another question.

‘Am I making a statement or is this an informal chat?’

Gary decided to level with him, and with no question at the end of it. Letting people talk was a more accurate way of weighing them up than showering them with continual questions. ‘I spotted your name on Lorna’s calendar, where she planned for you to MOT her car back in January. I guessed that there might not be too many Bryns in the area, so I thought I’d check out whether it was you. I’m part of the investigation team, so you will certainly be asked to make a statement, but for now I’m just trying to get some of the groundwork done.’

‘Yeah, well, you always were good at homework.’ Bryn drained the rest of his pint. ‘OK, hang on a minute,’ he added, and headed towards the Gents.

Gary watched him go, deciding nothing about him gave the impression of a man ill at ease, and yet Gary couldn’t help wondering whether Bryn was planning to head out of a back door.

He went to the bar for another couple of pints, and hoped he wouldn’t end up drinking them alone.

Bryn washed his hands, carefully squirting a large pool of liquid soap into his palm and taking time to work it between each of his fingers. Gradually, some of the oil stains began to shift, but he wasn’t fully conscious of what he was doing, most of his thoughts were focusing on Goodhew. Gary Goodhew.

That was a name from the past, and it was true that at first he hadn’t recognized his old classmate. But once the name had connected with the face, memories had rushed into his head. And he’d been surprised, not by the number – so far there had only been a few – but by the clarity.

Suddenly he could picture the whole class. Like the bulk of the kids there, he had gone on to Chesterton Secondary School, but there had been others who had disappeared at the end of that same year. He’d subsequently forgotten they’d ever existed – until now. Suddenly he remembered Karen Jarvis and her frizzy hair, her book bag perforated with holes from a pair of compasses.

Steve ‘Stench’ Manning, who didn’t actually smell, but just looked like he did.

Jon Wu, with the skinny legs and scraped knees, who wasn’t that bright but created masterpieces from papier mâché and poster paint.

And Gary Goodhew.

Goodhew’s desk had stood at right angles to the window. He’d mixed with everyone and no one, friendly enough, but seemed to spend most of his time staring through the glass. Who knew what he had found so absorbing out there in the car park, a few trees and a fence, but even so, he never missed a trick. When Mr Mosley threw him a question, Goodhew never failed to pluck the right answer from thin air and throw it right back.

And if he’d matured into an extension of that junior self, he wouldn’t be missing much now, that was for sure.

Bryn dried his hands and took a deep breath before reaching for the door handle.

For someone who claimed he didn’t like to think too deeply, he currently had a great deal on his mind. He knew that saying nothing wasn’t an option but, then again, he could see that saying too much might be dangerous. Just enough is what he now had to aim for. Precisely enough, at least until he’d had time to think.

Gary didn’t read anything significant into Bryn’s return to their table, but was pleased about it nonetheless. He wanted their conversation to start up pretty much where it had left off, so for that reason, he made sure to speak first. ‘You said you
thought
you knew Lorna Spence a little. I don’t understand what exactly you meant by that.’

He saw that Bryn had relaxed somewhat: he leant back in his seat, his posture seeming more open and his eye contact steady. As he answered, his speech was neither rushed nor overly hesitant. ‘She brought her car in one day. It was a Rover, I remember. She’d been parked up further down our road, and now it wouldn’t start. The alternator was on the blink, but it was a bit of a Friday car . . .’

Bryn paused there, and Gary knew he was looking appropriately blank.

‘A lemon. A dog. A car turned out quick ’cos everyone wants to knock off for the weekend. You know, one that keeps throwing up so many niggly faults that you think the whole machine must be a bit suspect.’

Gary nodded; he’d already got it at ‘lemon’.

‘Well, she came in a few times after that. I think it suited her because we’re so close to the town centre. Like I said, the car had mostly minor problems, but a couple of times we ended up having a drink afterwards. In here, actually.’

‘Her idea, or yours?’

Bryn screwed up his face, like he’d been asked a disproportionately difficult question. ‘Can’t remember.’ He looked at Gary as if waiting to be told whether or not that was a reasonable answer.

‘Fair enough,’ Gary replied.

‘I remember she asked if I fancied a game of pool, and we ended up in Mickey Flynn’s on Mill Road.’

‘Is that the American place?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘And what then?’

‘That happened a couple of times, too. She was funny – easy company. We saw each other a few times, but it wasn’t ever planned. She’d turn up and, if I was free, we’d spend a couple of hours together.’

‘Just as friends?’

Bryn smiled apologetically, like he’d just been caught with his fingers in a metaphorical jar of biscuits, then he shifted his expression rapidly towards neutral. ‘Sure,’ he replied.

‘OK.’ Gary meant it as in
OK, if that’s how you want to tell it,
and he could see that that was what Bryn realized he meant. However, they both pretended he’d intended it the other way. ‘So when did you last see her?’

‘About the time she wrote me on her calendar, I guess. I MOT’d the car, and then she said she planned to sell it. Never saw her after that.’

‘Did she ever mention friends, or seem lonely or unhappy? You know where she lived, so what else do you know?’

‘She mentioned people from work, said she had something going with her boss, but we never got into that. I think it might have been one of those on-off things. She never seemed like one of those women that can’t handle being on their own, and she certainly didn’t seem like she wanted to settle down soon. I run a mile from those types.’