48
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Stella tipped the lever enough to reel the film to fit the screen. She was back in the Hammersmith and Fulham Archives. That morning she had cancelled the rearranged recruitment meeting with Jackie to come to the library. She would do what Terry called good old-fashioned legwork. She had put into the grid the street names Jack had sung to the tune of the nursery rhyme. This had seemed real progress, until the internet failed to throw up an incident for Mafeking Avenue or another one for Marquis Way, apart from Vickery. They could have been wrong about the telegraph pole; it might have been pranged innocently. Then she remembered they had found bits of jade glass there. More frustrating was that she could find nothing for Tolworth Street where Marian said a man called David Lauren had died in 1989. The web wouldn’t deliver the Holy Grail.
Last night, when they had gone to Tolworth Street, they had located a scarred beech tree. Jade glass beneath its roots confirmed this was where Lauren had died. Jack was impressed with the tree for surviving the 1987 hurricane and the impact of Lauren’s car. He had told it so.
They had a year and a name for number four in Terry’s series of seven. There was no tree on Spelling Way, another street in Jack’s song. He had been vague about why he had included it. Stella wouldn’t put it past him to like how it fitted in the tune. She would discount it for now as they had enough to go on.
She opened her Filofax at her grid and took out papers she had stuffed in there. One caught her eye and she smoothed it out. It was the article about James Markham’s death she had printed up the last time she was here. She was about to refold it when a name caught her eye. Christopher Mason. Markham had killed a boy in the January before his own death in November 2002. At the time she had thought little of it. Three dead children was definitely a trend. Green stones at the base of the pole were the only proof something else had happened on Marquis Way apart from Vickery’s death. She had the bare details in row six and amended Vickery’s accident column to specify the type of tree. Terry would say it was important. They now knew the date of Charles Hampson’s death; she filled it in. Although there was a photograph for Mafeking Avenue, again green stones were all they had to indicate an event had happened there. Stella folded her arms and looked at the grid. They had street names for all the photographs except for number one, of the garage mechanic under the car which might not belong in the file.
She tried to think what Terry’s approach would be and returned a blank. She would use her method of scoping a job. She calculated the square footage, identified specific issues, like stains on a carpet. She broke these down to the kind of stains and length of time they had been there. Step by step. Stain by stain.
The first step was to establish when the warehouse in Mafeking Avenue was converted into apartments. Stella sat up. There had been a plaque on the wall. She tried to picture it, but did not have Jack’s photographic memory. He might remember; it was an excuse to call and gauge his mood around David Barlow. No, no point. He had not looked at the plaque.
Stella grabbed her iPhone and brought up Street View. Seconds later she had up Mafeking Avenue on a sunny day. She swivelled the handset to landscape. There was the plane tree. She found she was looking for Jack’s woodlice. Concentrate! A few more metres and she was outside the supermarket. She rotated ninety degrees to face the apartment block. The plaque was a fuzzy square behind the railings. Involuntarily she jerked her head to see around them. Zooming in did not help; she couldn’t read the inscription. She was about to give up when it sprang into focus.
Th foundation one was lai y
Counc r Vince Har wick
6 ne 01
Two black stripes – the railings – cut out letters but she had enough to go on. Only one month ended with: ‘ne’. June. The year had to be 2001. The building wasn’t flats when Terry took the picture. It was a lead, a slim one, but a lead none the less.
Stella found the film for 2001 and fed it into the machine. She skimmed at breakneck speed to June. The sixth had been a Wednesday that year. The Chronicle was published on Thursdays. She inched along to 7 June and found her grail.
COUNCILLOR FIRES THE STARTING GUN
By Lucille May
Vince Hardwick, Chair of the council, unveiled a plaque for Wilton Retreat, the conversion of the Wilton flour warehouse into luxury apartments yesterday. This kicks off the regeneration plan for Mafeking Avenue. The warehouse, operational for a century, was mothballed in 1963 when flour-production methods changed and bakers didn’t need to sift flour. Hardwick used his casting vote to veto a campaign by local residents for a housing association development for low-income families. The apartments, perfect for those with telephone number salaries, include a penthouse and offer spectacular views over West London.
We reminded Mr Hardwick that in 1970 Denis Atkins, who had held his position at the council, died when his MG Midget hit the tree that still stands opposite the warehouse. Appearing flustered he assured us the flats were a fitting monument.
Molly Atkins, 73, who lays flowers by the tree every year, insisted that her husband would not approve of ordinary people being deprived of a home.
If only the clumsy mechanism offered a search facility. With fifty-two weeks of 1970 to trawl though, this truly was legwork. An hour later Stella was rewarded. According to the nightwatchman at the nearby empty flour warehouse, Denis Atkins died on Monday, 7 September, around about eleven-thirty. Lucille May reported his death in four lines in that Thursday’s Chronicle. Persisting, Stella found another article by May, who had gone to his inquest two weeks later. Despite recent storms, Monday had been dry; there had been no black ice. Atkins had no alcohol in his blood and his Midget was in good repair. The verdict was ‘Accidental Death’. She hit ‘print’ and put the dead councillor in her grid.
She put off searching for clues to the telegraph-pole incident on Marquis Way. David Lauren held more promise. She paced the line of grey metal cabinets. The years were typed in wonky Courier font on browned and crinkled labels. She found the drawer marked ‘1986 to 1990’: 1989 was missing. She checked it hadn’t been misfiled. All the years were in order. She slammed shut the drawer and tried the one above and then the one below. It was not there. She balked at combing the entire collection; that was taking legwork too far.
‘You’re making rather a noise.’ The librarian was beside her. ‘Can I help?’
‘I’m looking for 1989,’ Stella barked loudly. She lowered her voice. ‘It’s been stolen.’
‘That can’t be.’ Stella watched her follow the same process, pausing at the gap in chronology, and was torn between wanting the woman to locate the reel and not wanting to look stupid if it was there all along. It was not there.
‘We get few thefts. It’s probably being repaired. The films get worn or the boxes collapse, although it’s not a popular year. Had it had been 1968 or the Silver Jubilee in 1977…’
While she waited for the librarian to confirm this Stella reread her notes and the size of the task pressed in again. It would be easier with two, but since Amanda Hampson’s death Jack had been distracted. The business last night confirmed he was up to something that could land him in trouble or worse. She was disconsolate.
She stared. Something was written on the opposite page to her grid.
‘Harvey Gray, aged 53, Marquis Way, Monday, 17 March 2003.’
Stella had jotted down the details of their first search on the newspaper’s website in case it was important. This was the other death on Marquis Way. Stella nearly called out to the librarian. She had another street! She retrieved the film for 2003 from the cabinets and, her hands trembling with anticipation, fed it into the microfiche. Soon she was looking at the edition for Thursday, 20 March.
SHOE MAN DIES IN CRASH
By Lucille May
Harvey Gray, owner of Gray Shoes, was killed outright when his luxury Lexus SUV left the road and hit a telegraph pole on Marquis Way W6 late on Monday. Gray was rushed to Charing Cross Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Miss Carol Jones of Arkwright Buildings, Shepherd’s Bush, was on Marquis Way at half past ten and raised the alarm on her mobile phone.
Mr Gray’s factory on Britton Drive went into receivership last year. Police are asking an elderly person who passed Ms Jones before she arrived at the scene of the accident to come forward; he or she may possess vital information. Anyone who witnessed the incident or who has information should contact Hammersmith Police Station…
Stella recognised May’s name. This was the pushy woman who had written the article about Terry’s funeral.
The shots of Marquis Way on Street View were dated June 2009; darts of light bounced off quartz in the paving, shadows were stark in blinding sunshine. Terry went in the winter when the camber glistened with recent rain and a drain was clogged with leaves.
Stella pictured the dilapidated factory outlet in the first street they had visited. Signs and coincidences. Jack’s world. The wording was similar to the other articles about accidents also reported by Lucille May. Stella guessed May had got into the habit of trotting out the same phrases for fatalities that over the years must have become routine. Scarcely able to contain her triumph, she slotted Gray into her grid. She noted the figure seen near the crash could have been a man or a woman. A man surely.
Step by step. Stain by stain.
‘No luck, I’m afraid. Nineteen eighty-nine has vanished.’ The librarian was back. ‘Leave me your details and if it turns up I’ll call.’
Stella thanked her and studied her grid so far. Marian said that David Lauren had run over a boy called Billy. Charlie Hampson knocked over a child a few months before he died. Paul Vickery killed James Harrison in 1976. Stella looked at her watch. She was standing in for Wendy at a bridal shop in Ealing and didn’t have time to check if Harvey Gray killed a child. A hunch told her that he had.
Marian Williams had called David Lauren’s victim ‘Little Billy’ in the sugary manner of Lucille May. Impatient with ‘Tiny Tim’ sentimentality, Stella had forgotten to put it in her grid. She did so now. ‘Little Billy’ would have to do until she had his full name.
‘Here you are!’ The librarian placed a cardboard box in front of her. ‘Nineteen eighty-nine! Some of our visitors get numbers wrong or find our cataloguing system tricky. My mentioning 1968 got me thinking and hey presto! This was in the nineties drawer next to 1998.’
David Lauren had died when his car had slammed into a tree on Tolworth Street – the ubiquitous Lucille May didn’t give the species of tree – late on Friday, 31 March 1989. The paper splashed a half-page photograph of the flourishing beech deep in floral tributes. The crashed car had been removed. Stella gave Lucille May credit, the journalist had done her homework and linked the crash to the death of William Carter on Boxing Day 1988 in another article with the convoluted headline: ‘Christmas Boy-Death Crash Man Dies’.
May described how ‘Little Billy’ had been riding his Christmas scooter on the pavement outside Kings Court in Hammersmith when Lauren’s Vauxhall Carlton had mounted the kerb and ‘mown him down’. Stella wrote this next to his full name for good measure. May’s tone went as far as she legally dared to portray Lauren as cold-blooded and careless. ‘At the inquest, Lauren showed no emotion, apart from a kiss blown to his wife in the gallery. Dressed in a tailored suit…’ Maybe this wasn’t so routine after all. It was as if the woman took it personally.
Stella found her own emotions stirred. She altered the ‘Victim’ column to ‘Driver’; the children were the real victims. Unable to bear the crossings out, she rewrote the grid on a clean page. She sent the article for printing and, flinging herself back in her chair, reviewed her newly populated grid.
Four drivers had each killed a child; she would assume they all had. Her head was pounding. She had twenty-three minutes to get to ‘Happiest Day’ in Ealing. Gray and Atkins would have to wait. She thanked the librarian, paid for her printing and left.
A keen breeze whipped beneath Hammersmith flyover and blew away Stella’s frail sense of victory. Six men had died in five streets. Seven chips were buried at each of the crash sites. A man had stepped out in front of their cars, making them swerve and slam into a tree or a pole. Jack was right, it was a risky modus operandi: if one driver had survived, he could have said what happened. None of them had. The murderer had got away with it.
As she passed the police station on Shepherd’s Bush Road, Stella glanced up at Marian’s office. In the morning she would return the green form.
Overtaking a number 72 bus, Stella admitted to herself that, at the end of the day, she and Jack were no nearer to knowing who had killed these men and why.