remembered when it was new, when he was a boy, excited at seeing the old tramlines and cobbles exposed like skeletons from underneath the tarmac when they rebuilt the town centre, before the buses that rumbled past it every day dirtied the front.
He looked around nervously though. He didn’t like it around the bus station. The gangs of kids used to taunt him, take his money and laugh at him, small groups of trouble dressed all in black. He had bought a scooter when his mother died—she wouldn’t let him have one when she was alive—so that he wouldn’t have to get the bus any more.
He walked into the Telegraph building and then jumped as the entry mat emitted a buzzing sound when he stepped on it. There was a large wooden counter in front of him, with photographs from the paper pinned to the wall behind, showing people in suits holding giant cheques and a display of schoolboy football teams. That day’s edition was fanned out on a small round table. A young woman appeared out of a doorway. Her badge said she was called Jackie.
He lifted his goggles onto his crash helmet. She looked surprised, startled almost, although he didn’t know why. He always wore them, particularly in summer. They kept the flies and fumes out of his eyes.
He smiled. She was wearing a vest top, and he could see the outline of the lace on her bra-cup. He liked that.
‘What can I do for you?’ she said.
Frankie thought she sounded nervous. He watched her delicate fingers as they toyed with a pen in her hand. He wondered where she lived.
‘I’m Frankie,’ he said quietly, ‘and I’m looking for a reporter.’
‘You’ve come to the right building, Frankie.’
He shook his head. She didn’t understand. ‘No, not any reporter. He drives a red sports car. Jack Garrett.’
‘Why do you want him?’
‘He’s writing about Claude Gilbert.’
She raised her eyebrows at that. ‘He doesn’t work for us. He’s freelance, lives somewhere in Turners Fold.’
‘Do you have an address?’
Frankie thought she was about to tell him, but she stopped and looked embarrassed. ‘I can’t give out addresses,’ she said.
‘But I need it,’ he said, and he leant forward onto the counter. It made her step back quickly.
‘Just wait there,’ she said. ‘What’s your name again?’
‘Frankie.’
‘Just Frankie?’
He nodded.
She disappeared into the doorway again, and Frankie could hear her whispering to someone. They were talking about him. He felt tears prickle his eyes. He had blown it again.
He should have found the reporter on the internet, made his own way there.
He turned to leave, his fists clenched with frustration, and as he rushed for the door, his footsteps set off the entry buzzer again.
He took some deep breaths and put his fingers to his cheeks when he reached the street. They felt hot. He slipped his goggles back over his eyes and then sat astride his scooter, fumbling quickly for the keys. He shouldn’t have gone there. Now they had a name. His name. He pressed down on the kickstart pedal, and then raced down the bus lane, working quickly through the gears until he was out of sight of the building.
I sat in my car and thought about Bill Hunter. He had remembered my father’s death and, as soon as he had mentioned it, I knew I would call at the cemetery. It was quiet, and I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering whether I should go in.
I hadn’t been for a few months; visits had recently become confined to Father’s Day and Christmas and I felt bad about that. I looked along the rows of granite slabs, broken up by the occasional splash of colour from flowers left in memoriam. Our house had memories of him dotted around, his Johnny Cash records, old photographs, but I knew I should visit the grave more often, to keep the dirt from the gold-etched words: ‘Robert Garrett—Beloved Husband and Father’.
I closed my eyes and swallowed, fought the wetness in my eyes. This was why I didn’t come often—because whenever I saw the patch of grass, I imagined him under the ground, in the box, still and cold. I fought the images, tried to see the grave as merely a marker, a focal point, because that wasn’t how I wanted to remember him. I wanted to think of the man who had been in my life, strong and quiet and caring, not the police officer who had been shot in the line of duty.
Losing both parents had toughened me up, perhaps too much. When I looked at Laura, saw her smile or heard her laugh, or whenever I caught her in an unguarded moment, vulnerable and soft, unlike the tough cop I knew she could be, I felt a need to hold her, to be the strong man. But most times I stopped myself; something inside of me held me back, as if I was waiting for the rejection.
So maybe losing both parents hadn’t toughened me up at all. Maybe it had made me too fragile, so that I was scared of the knockbacks.
I turned the key in the ignition.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I whispered, ‘but I’m going to have to sell the car.’ Then I laughed at myself. Not really for talking to myself, but because it was about something as trivial as a car. It wasn’t that simple though. My father had owned that car throughout my childhood. It was how I remembered Sunday mornings, my father with a sponge in his hand, washing it down. I had friends at school whose fathers owned better cars than a 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red, but to my father it was a reward for his police work, the drives on sunny days his escape from the humdrum of family life.
I let my words hang there for a minute or so, just giving him a chance to hear them, to know that I wasn’t being disrespectful. It was my last real connection with my father and somehow I wanted him to know that I was doing it for the right reason, not because I was trying to dim his memory.
My thoughts were interrupted by my phone ringing. I took a couple of deep breaths before I answered.
‘Hello?’
‘I’ve got some material for you.’
I smiled. It was Tony Davies.
‘What like?’
‘Just the archive stuff we used for the Gilbert anniversary edition. I’ve done you copies. I’ll drop them off later.’
I thanked him and hung up. I gave a quick salute to the lines of headstones. At least I was making progress.
Mike Dobson closed his eyes as he lay back on the sofa. It was one of those summer evenings when the heat never really disappears and the neighbourhood children seem to play too late, the laughs and shrieks drifting in through the open windows.
The television was on in the corner of the room, but he couldn’t concentrate. Why was it that the memories came back to him so strongly? He could go for months
