1.

‘So, how did you get the name “Ricky the Touch”?’

‘Well, it’s because I was a bit of a touch, isn’t it?’

‘Right, and your name’s Ricky.’

‘Yeah. At least it was. Nowadays I’m Richie to everyone, but back then I had always been Ricky.’

‘Fine, but why “The Touch”? What is a touch, anyway, in this sense?’

‘You know, someone who’s a bit of a touch. It’s like if you can fool someone easy, make ‘em look stupid. Carl was always doing that to me. Taking the piss.’

I remember Carl, of course. It was he, his seemingly innocuous question, or comment, whatever you want to call it, that had started me on this road. Indirectly, he had put me right where I was today.

---

 

‘Hello? Who’s that? Is that Ricky the Touch?’

I’ve often asked myself, especially recently, why I was passing by that very conversation at that very moment, and what might have become of me had I not. The conversation itself, however it may have played out after such an imponderable beginning, was probably mostly irrelevant, almost definitely banal in the extreme, but had taken on a significance so far beyond that originally intended that it would scare you witless if you were to give it any meaningful thought. Believe me when I say that.

In those days I had been a bus driver. An average one. One of my less praiseworthy careers. I struggled, frankly, with the discipline required to stick rigidly to the prescribed path. My improvements to the number 26 route knocked almost half an hour off the journey time, but I received no thanks for that. Quite the opposite, in fact. But still, at the time I’m travelling back to now, I was still employed by the bus company. The vendetta was still embryonic then.

I had finished my early shift – it must have been just before midday and was sweltering – and had dropped off the vehicle to the works’ yard, as it was due a service. I knew Carl, of course: he was one of the mechanics. He was a barrel of a man. More than that, he was a barrel full of rosy apples. Overflowing with them. He fought on Saturdays, played pub football on Sundays and worked like a dog during the week. I suppose he was good at his job – he certainly always seemed to be there whenever I had to spend time at the works – but I had never really warmed to him. He had always looked at me a bit suspiciously since the time he caught me reading a novel on an empty bus. I was desperate to finish it so I had brought it to work with me, with the express intention of polishing off the last chapter when I finished my shift, then I could return it to the library on the way home. For my part, I found him a bit shifty, and somehow not fully human. I think it was the whole barrel thing: he walked like a barrel, laughed like a barrel, probably played football like a barrel. But most of all he talked like a barrel, and a barrel full of shiny red apples, at that.

So my shift had ended, and I left the bus in what we called the vestibule and walked across the yard towards the admin building so I could have my timesheet verified. Carl, it seems, was busy under one of the new single-deckers, and his phone rang. That was one of the things I just didn’t understand about him: his phone was constantly ringing. Who was calling him? Did he really know that many people who just had to talk to him? It intimidated me a bit, if I’m honest.

But, whatever my feelings on the subject, that was when I heard it:

‘Hello? Who’s that? Is that Ricky the Touch?’ The words came barrelling out of him and filled the whole workshop.

I stopped in my tracks and turned to gape. I felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. Who would be called such a thing? The whimsicality was clear to me, naturally, yet it hit me deeper than one might think possible, for something so playful. I did nothing about it at the time, simply continued on my way once I had regained my senses, and had my timesheet stamped as planned: it was the end of the month and this was overtime. I was due a bumper pay packet. Besides, even if I had had the presence of mind and the courage to raise it with Carl right there and then, I doubt if he would have given me anything approaching a straight answer.

The seed had been planted. It grew in me. To this day, I believe that nobody else within earshot at the time, and there were a few, gave a moment’s further thought to the ridiculous epithet. I was different, though. It bored into my very being like a virulent genetic mutation. Is it true that seemingly harmless throwaway comments or events can get stuck in your own personal guttering and not wash away like they’re supposed to? That’s the only thing I can compare it to. Through the coming and going of two marriages, countless careers, a depressingly large clutch of friends, I never once lost the memory. Whenever I heard the words “Ricky” or “Touch”, that moment was back with me. Fortunately, the word “the” didn’t have the same effect on me, or I would have been in my current position many years earlier, I’d expect.

A mythical figure. My own personal chimera. What exactly had happened to cause that? What combination of chemical inputs had conspired to produce that particular result? Had it been the exact frequency of Carl’s barrel-like voice at that very moment? A peculiar coincidence of acoustics? Or was it more intangible than that? Maybe the exotic promise of “The Touch” had pricked my curiosity. Without physically opening up my brain and scanning it with some machine, I don’t suppose anybody will ever know. All I know is that it has been as real as the nose on my face since that day in an oil-stained workshop, when the only thing on my mind had been my overtime.

I handled it, in my own fashion. The fact that the vision of Ricky had never deserted me was no more than a fact. It was rare that his shadowy presence would make itself felt in any of my most vital decision-making moments. He was there, I don’t deny it, but he wasn’t what you might call a destructive force. There were always more urgent problems to attend to. I even managed to convince myself that he was some kind of stabilising influence in my ever-changing world. When I take the time to look at things dispassionately, it always amazes me how we can rationalise the most irrational things about us into some kind of perverted virtue. At least, I can. I’d be disappointed if others didn’t do the same.

And, probably because of that, he came to me in my time of need. When I emerged from the wreckage of my second marriage, I have to admit I was desperate to find some life-affirming quest to grab hold of and give me focus. Imagine, I thought, if I could find and humanize my nemesis, the loss of everything else I had held dear would be put into some kinder perspective, one that would banish my suicidal fantasies.

---

How to start? I had no idea who Ricky actually was. I had nothing to go on except a nickname, which may or may not have been widely used and could have fallen out of use as soon as it was dreamed up. I would have to start with Carl, but that was hardly the simplest of tasks either. Did he even have a surname? He hardly needed one. And it was nearly 20 years ago, so the chances of the bus company even existing were pretty remote: it had been a time of great and unprecedented change in the public transport industry.

But I needed to put those negative thoughts to the back of my mind. If you were to start listing all the things that might make something impossible, you’d never get started on anything. I was an expert in that, and it was time for me to change. This was my new raison d’etre. For years I had had terrible difficulty finding a way to define myself, and, if I’m honest, I was quite excited about finally landing on something, on someone I could be. I would be the man who found Ricky the Touch, who gave him a voice, coloured in his background, the man who brought him to life, no less. Imagine it.

So, methodical I would be. Tick off the things which still concealed his identity. One challenge at a time. If I found myself in blind alleys, I would simply turn around and rejoin the main carriageway and try a different route.

The first thing on the list turned out easier than I had convinced myself it would. I went back to the bus company’s offices and depot in Tooting. To my initial dismay, from some distance away along the Mitcham Road, I could tell that the depot was no more. Where I would once have swung my vehicle into the yard, a new and impressive-looking wrought-iron gate stood, guarded by electronic sensors and pin codes. Above and either side, the Juliet balconies told of conscience-free urban redevelopment. This was a blow, and it deflated me, until I caught sight of a small black door to the left of that ostentatious gate. A brass plate screwed to it read:

MTS Provincial Transport Services

Head Office and Archive

The company I had represented all those years ago had been called Tooting & Provincial Transport – I still had the payslips somewhere in my boxes. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that a couple of mergers or rebrands, common in the time since I had been plying my trade in that business, could have morphed the name into what was now etched here. And this was the Head Office. Clearly no buses operated from here any more. They probably had a depot somewhere on less valuable real estate. This area had really changed in the intervening years. I tried to slow my heart rate a little: this could well be the first step in a long journey, and I’d got lucky. I rang the buzzer.

A voice crackled over the intercom. It was a terribly cheap model, and the words were far from clear. That concerned me a bit. If they couldn’t even take seriously something as simple as customer communication, what would that mean for their employment records? I carried on a strained conversation with the box, of which I understood probably less than half, but in the end I did manage to convince it to let me in on the grounds of genuine research for a genuine emergency.

The ground floor was not much more than a corridor. An imposing steel door led to the left and, next to it, the start of a staircase. A perspex sign indicated that MTS P.T.S Reception was to be reached via that staircase, although it didn’t give away how far up. I climbed slowly: I was pretty excited about what I might find here, but the recent conversation hadn’t filled me with too much hope. Besides, I was horribly out of condition. I wanted to prepare myself for how I might handle the situation when I arrived. I was willing to do much of the legwork myself in terms of research, but I would need some guidance through the archives, I expected. I didn’t expect to be given too much in the way of assistance, if my initial reception was anything to go by. But I was determined not to be intimidated or put off too easily. This was personal business of the most important kind, and I would hold firm in the face of any stonewalling.

The reception area appeared to be on the first floor. Through the door’s chequered glass I could just about make out a figure sitting at a large desk, which he was keeping militarily tidy. The door was locked, and my clumsy efforts to open it, whilst surely impossible to remain completely oblivious to, made no visible impact on the occupant of the office. I stared for a while, impotent. Whoever was behind that desk was showing no signs of looking my way. Eventually I stepped back in an attempt at fresh perspective. Around a yard to the left of the door, and much higher than you would expect to find it, a button. Underneath was a sign inviting one to ring buzzer for admittance. So, that was going to be how it was going to be, was it? I pressed the buzzer and held it for slightly longer than was really necessary. If there was any irritation in his face as it looked up, I couldn’t make it out from my side of the window. His hand moved to the far right of the desk and I heard the lock click open on the door. I tried the handle again and I was in.

‘Good morning,’ came the man’s voice. Deep and warm, not the voice I had expected at all. Everything up to now had painted a picture of a pipsqueak jobsworth in my mind. The tone and manner took me aback. He moved in for the kill: ‘How can I help you today, sir?’ And he gave me his entire attention. Every last drop of it.

‘Ah, well……’ I had to regain my composure if I were to survive this initial rally. Stay concise and to the point. Get my scoring shots in early, get back on the front foot. ‘I’m an ex-employee of Tooting & Provincial, in fact I used to work out of the depot that was on this site, and I’m trying to track down another employee from the same time. Very important personal business, you see. I was hoping to locate him and maybe leave my details so that he could get in touch with me. If that’s possible. I’d very much appreciate the opportunity to contact him regarding the very, err….., important personal, um, business. So we can discuss it and come to some, um, some kind of, hmmm, mutually….’

‘Say no more. Of course! That’s pretty much exactly what we’re here for,’ he looked happier with this news than I did, despite the fact that it was exactly what I had envisaged in my dreams of the last few nights. ‘That’s why I set up the archive three years ago when the developers moved in.’ To his left was a large window over the central courtyard. He looked dispassionately out of it now. ‘I love to play my part in what I consider family business. If I can reunite old brothers, or sisters, then I’m performing a worthwhile function.’

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I had been prepared, whilst climbing that short climb, for red tape, disinterest and a long, fruitless slog. This was a turnaround I could barely credit.

‘So you’ll help me?’ I squeaked out. Like a mouse. I probably looked like one, as well as sounding like one. If I were him, I wouldn’t have helped me.

‘Come on,’ he beamed as he rose from his seat. He removed his jacket and relocated it to a waiting hanger, removed his silvery cufflinks, placed them into a mother-of-pearl dish under the computer screen and folded back his sleeves deliberately. He still looked as immaculate as he had before, except that now he was ready for some real work. ‘Let’s get stuck into these archives. You’ll feel better once we’re amongst them,’ and he led the way out of the door, back down the stairs.

He stopped in front of the steel door on the ground floor landing and waved a magnetic card at an invisible sensor. The door opened slowly inwards. He looked back at me and beckoned me to follow.

 

2.

I stepped through the open door and the lights came slowly up. None of your old-fashioned flickering of fluorescent tubes, either: this was targeted low-voltage lighting. I could see that the spots were noticeably dimmer the further they were from us, and the most distant reaches of the room weren’t lit at all. He seemed proud of that: ‘It’s about as environmentally friendly as I could get: there are hundreds of sensors all around, which pinpoint your location and adjust the environment appropriately. The air-conditioning has been dropped in this area, too – normal ambient temperature for the archives is a bit chilly for the likes of you and me.’

My jaw was in no hurry to raise itself from the floor. This was completely unexpected. Not only was the space vast, it was completely ravishing to behold. The whole room was lined, floor, walls, ceiling, in some kind of velvet blue; the shelving was a soft blue-grey that looked warm to the touch. The lighting and the dumbstruck air completed the perfect cocoon.

‘Where are my manners?’ the man broke the awed silence and held out his immaculately manicured hand. ‘I’m Fred Acworth. Chief Archivist.’

‘Acworth….’ I took his hand and shook it, ‘that rings a bell. Were you involved in the old company?’

‘Not really. I was still at school when it was functioning in the way you’ll understand. My father – Ed Acworth – owned the company, though. You may remember him.’

Yes, I did. He was the guy who stamped the weekly timesheets in the admin office. I had no idea he was the big boss. That was a turn-up.

‘When we sold the depot to the developer, we made a fortune. Or, more accurately, I made a fortune. My parents are long gone and my brother renounced all his claims on the business a number of years ago. I insisted that they keep the archive here in some form, and the board of the company agreed that I could stay on and manage it. I don’t draw a salary – no need – and I’m no bother to them. I think they secretly quite like having something a bit quirky like this. Not that they have any idea about how it functions or what I do.’

‘It says “Head Office” too on the plate by the door. But it seems like it’s just you here. Where’s the rest of them?’ I asked.

‘That’s just my idea of a joke, I’m afraid. It’s not the head office or the registered office or anything. It’s just the archive, which they indulge from afar. I wanted that on the sign, just to see if anybody would react. Up to now nobody’s even seen it.’ He paused and looked around. He was right in what he was thinking: they would be amazed if they bothered to visit. I bet they wouldn’t even get funny about the “Head Office” thing. ‘But I shouldn’t hold it against them, I suppose: nobody else comes here either. You’re only the second visitor I’ve had. The other was some sort of local newspaper journalist looking for old photos of the depot from the glory days. Some scandal. An old murder or something. Nice girl. I managed to find a few good ones for her. Very grateful, she was.’

He swept me through a detailed tour of the facility. I found it incredible that a bus company, of all things, would have such an extensive catalogue of the past. It hadn’t occurred to me until then what a central part in local history such prosaic enterprises play.

All the artefacts had been painstakingly catalogued and filed. He guided me through old newspaper articles; a quite staggering array of photographs; official route maps, and almost as many proposals for suggested and aborted new ones; supplier invoices; receipts; sketches and models for innovative new vehicles (in those days, he explained to me, each operating company designed and built their own); blueprints for building work, including that for the planned employee centre which never saw the light of day; minutes of AGMs, including the very last, at which the merger with Mitcham and Streatham Greyhounds was finally ratified. And personnel records, of course. That was where our tour came to a halt. The lights elsewhere in the room dimmed and we stood, muffled, in front of the mighty record of human endeavour that defined the company.

I gave him my name, in response to his query, even though it wasn’t me we were looking for. He explained, while gliding across to the Ks, that any investigation like this has to be built on solid foundations. He wanted to form a full picture of me before heading off on a search that could change both our lives. I thought that a little unlikely, but it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do, so I humoured him.

His archivist’s fingers found me straight away. In his hands he held the whole history of the 10 months I spent as an employee. It was a sorry-looking limp little folder: my resignation letter; my disciplinary warnings (there were several – as a company they indulged me for much longer than they really needed to, although in the end they did ask me to offer my resignation); my references for subsequent employers (an uncommonly large number, he pointed out, non-judgementally); overtime records; Rorschach test results; everything you might think of.

He flicked through, and finally closed up the folder and replaced me where I belonged, with a smile. It had hardly been the most glittering of assignments, but it wasn’t the time to be dwelling on that now. He wanted background, and that was exactly what he got.

‘Now,’ he got back to the business in hand, ‘who is this chap you’re trying to find? I suppose it would make sense to start with a name?’

Ah. This was where things got interesting. I knew his name was Carl, but beyond that I was struggling. Acworth was totally unruffled by my admission.

‘That’s not necessarily a disaster,’ he reassured me. ‘Can you tell me anything about him? What did he do? Had he been here long? Who did he work with? Anything you can remember that might give us some more ammunition.’

‘I’ll try. I didn’t know much about him at all, if I’m honest. He was a mechanic, and he seemed to know everybody, so I suppose…’

‘A mechanic, you say?’ he sprang into life. ‘Follow me!’ and we squeezed around the far side of the hushed shelves and back towards the finance zone. I didn’t like to question the logic – personally, I would have thought personnel records the most appropriate place, but he seemed energized.

‘You’re probably wondering why we’re headed back here to the musty old invoices!’ he half turned his head toward me. ‘But don’t worry – I haven’t lost my marbles. You see, by that time we had contracted out all the maintenance of the fleet. The mechanics worked for someone else entirely. Won’t find hide nor hair of them on our personnel records. But they should appear on the contractor invoices. Names, too. Everything was itemised.’

And, true to his word, there they were. The sheer efficiency of the setup continued to amaze me. I couldn’t have hoped for a better place to begin my investigations. As it turned out, during that period there was only one Carl employed as a mechanic. Carl Beard. That rang a bell – I was probably aware of his surname at the time, even if he didn’t really find a need for it. But the files yielded no more information than that.

We copied the relevant invoice: it had the name and address of the contractor on the letterhead. Somewhere down by the bottom of Streatham Common. Acworth sent me on my way with his heartfelt wishes for a successful conclusion.

‘Do let me know if you find him’ he said while seeing me out. ‘It would be nice for me to know I’ve been a small part of a happy event.’

‘I’ll be sure to,’ I replied, meaning it. He had been more helpful than I could have hoped for, and the memory of that archive would stay with me forever. I even smiled at the “Head Office” joke.

---

I closed the brass-plated door on Acworth’s smiling figure and strode back into the cold bath of reality. I walked the couple of miles east with inflated hopes, but those hopes were soon dashed. Standing in front of the address I’d been given, I stared it down. From the grubby façade back to my photocopied invoice, back to the façade, back to the invoice. I definitely had the right premises. These days, though, you were less likely to find jobbing mechanics in here. But if you fancied chicken, pizza or a kebab, you would be in paradise. I didn’t have a craving for any of that, tempting though it looked. This time, there was no magical door to one side, either. No opportune staircase that would lead me back to a forgotten time. The reaction of the staff to my suggestion there might be an archive department hidden away somewhere in the building seemed a little excessive, but I tried to put myself in their shoes, and gained some interesting insight.

This was a blow, and no mistake. Really, it was exactly the sort of result I had expected when I had set off in the morning, but my spectacular early success had ratcheted up my expectations. I trudged home in a dark mood, bemoaning my luck.

But the new me was determined not to let this setback be the last word. The old me might have allowed that. I settled down to yesterday’s reheated leftovers and asked several bottles of craft beer for some ideas on how to bounce back. The answer came unequivocally. I knew where tomorrow would take me.

 

3.

I was back in Acworth’s office by 9.00. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not be there. It wasn’t as if he had very much to keep him occupied, so he could have been forgiven for not showing up at normal hours. But he was there when I buzzed, and seemed pleased to see me.

I explained about the disappointment of the day before. He seemed to feel my pain.

‘Is it possible,’ I asked speculatively, more than anything, ‘that Carl worked here for other contractors too? I don’t really know how professionally mobile mechanics are, or were, in those days.’

‘Genius!’ he yelled. ‘Now we know who he is, we don’t have to constrain ourselves to just that period of his working life. It’s perfectly feasible that he found employment here via a different route. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we was directly employed by us at some point, either: from memory, it was only a few years before your time that we contracted them out. He might have been one of ours!’ He flung off his jacket and raced pell-mell down the stairs, exhorting me to follow. I did as I was told.

The search was a harder slog than the previous day had been. We found no record of him in the company’s personnel records, so we returned to the invoices for the now-defunct contractor. It seems he had only been on their books for one month before I joined, and disappeared from their manifest around a month after I had resigned. I found it difficult to believe that he had only been around for a month before me, so I suggested we go back in time and see if he had been on another contractor’s books before that.

‘Unlikely,’ mulled Acworth. ‘This mob had been the sole supplier for six months or so by that point. Before that we used four or five different firms. I suppose it must have been easier to manage, and probably cheaper, to narrow that down to one. But we can check those invoices, if you think it’s worthwhile.’

We did, and we got nothing. There were actually seven suppliers before the rationalisation (that was how the Board had described it at the previous AGM), but none of them had supplied anybody by the name of Carl Beard.

Then the archivist had a flash of memory. ‘Rationalisation. That word brings back a great raft of possibilities. I remember my Dad coming home after that AGM. He knew the whole thing would backfire: anything purely designed to make more profit always did, he said. And wasn’t he right?’

‘Was he?’ I asked.

‘Yes. He was. Within 18 months it had all gone completely haywire. The mechanics held the company to ransom, not to put too fine a point on it. They demanded more pay, more overtime, better holiday and pension arrangements, you name it. The firm weren’t interested, and couldn’t afford the demands anyhow. It was obvious it was all going to end messily. Someone, somewhere, set up a brand new company which promised all sorts of riches to anybody that transferred: healthcare, profit-share, huge bonuses based on some incomprehensible business plan that was effectively going to make them all rich within two years. They all transferred, every last one of them. It meant that our company was forced into bringing them on board as sole supplier: they had the entire workforce. But, worse than that, the Board got conned into investing in this bogus outfit to the tune of thousands and thousands. Effectively they were bankrolling the fantasy that was being spun by this bunch of shysters. Needless to say, the mechanics lost everything and the brains behind it all disappeared with everybody’s cash and their futures. And the bus company went bankrupt.’

‘But that was years ago. That can’t have been the end?’

‘Of course not. Bankrupt or not, the community needed a bus company, so it had to be resurrected. That was the management buyout. My Dad and two of the other managers who hadn’t been happy about the way things had been run in the previous few years.’ So that explained the mysterious matter of the timesheet manager running the whole shooting match. ‘Within a year, the other two had got cold feet and withdrawn with no profit, but my Dad could see it was a healthy investment, and a going concern. Not to mention his livelihood and potentially mine too. He was in for the long term.’

‘So, what happened to the mechanics?’

‘Good question. That might be the key. Dad removed the whole concept of sole supplier, although he tried to keep the number of contractors to a minimum just so he wasn’t swamped with invoices. The majority of them returned to the original company – your kebab shop – and they got some kind of amnesty in terms of length of service and that kind of thing, but some moved as a group to third bunch, who had seen what had happened and were keen to increase their manpower. It’s a cut-throat industry, you know. Let’s check their invoices. They should be on the computer. I think I’ve done back as far as that now for third parties.’

He had been diligently digitising the entire archive: scanning in every single piece of paper in the purpose-built room, filing it as carefully in the database as he had previously in the breathtaking shelving. So, back upstairs, we trawled forward in time until the third company showed up on the records. Sure enough, there was Carl Beard, the first name listed on their first ever invoice. Funnily enough, it was the only invoice of theirs he appeared on. We continued forward. Two, three years, but no further sightings, representing that or any other company. It might not matter: we had an address for the contractor. Summerstown. A short walk. Another chance.

It was lunchtime. Fred was keen to discuss our next move. Over a pint. It seemed the natural thing to do: neither of us was really rushing off to anything that wouldn’t keep, and I was feeling a growing affinity with this singular individual. He was simultaneously a throwback and a thoroughly modern man. The fact that he didn’t have to sweat for his daily bread must have had a massive influence on the way he approached life, but it was impossible to hold that against him.

We decamped next door and I found a corner. He ordered drinks and enough food to see me through the next couple of days. We spoke of buses, naturally. Not in the mechanical sense: he had no penchant for that at all, and I was totally ignorant myself. His Dad was always disappointed in his lack of technical understanding, he told me. But what he did have, and I shared, was a passion for the routes. When he had been employed by the company, his task was that of constantly questioning and improving the routes the company ran. Whether or not they were useful to the punters, how their efficacy might be increased, how to maintain consistent gaps, even what kind of vehicles might be useful for the introduction of routes more off the beaten track.

He shared with his father the overriding motivation to provide a flawless bus service. Everything they did as a company was geared towards that. Profits came a very poor second in the table of priorities. Although, he pointed out, they never allowed themselves to be totally irresponsible in that direction: if there was no company, there could be no vessel for the innovation they craved. But only the family held shares, so there was no need to worry about servicing faceless investors. And, in the end, it had turned out that the real assets were in the real estate. Who would have thought that the depot itself would have been the goldmine? Who would have predicted that a grubby piece of Tooting would end up so valuable? His father certainly had an inkling: he made sure that the land remained firmly in the family’s hands as part of the merger. Fred liked to think that told of some kind of karma, some reward for running a company the right way.

On top of all that, he had been given the chance to bring his organisational and cataloguing skills into action once the depot moved. When the archive had shared the Tooting site with the depot, it had been impressively extensive and well managed – his father had been relatively organised – but now he had reached a different level. He had spent the last three years expanding it, organising and computerising everything that came in. Above all, treating the whole project like a delicate child.

I realised how lucky I had been to have run into somebody this dedicated to recording the past. Otherwise I surely would have been looking for my life’s next abortive mission by now.

 

4.

There were almost no public records of the short-lived contracting company which led to the bankruptcy, unsurprisingly. Outfits like that tend not to have the most watertight of procedures or dedication to paperwork. But I struck lucky once more with the third company, the one that picked the corpse of the dodgy lot.

It was a bit shabby. Above a sword shop in Garratt Lane, it wouldn’t have grabbed my attention had I been a struggling mechanic just off the train at Earlsfield, looking for an answer. But that wasn’t important: I was there to find out about Carl, if I could.

There wasn’t even what might be called an entry system. The street door was ajar, and a handwritten sign on the peeling wall directed me to the 2^nd floor. All I could find on that floor was a cramped office containing some kind of human behind a shambolic desk. The office clearly did not occupy the entire floor. There was a door at the back, opposite where the figure sat, but it didn’t exactly invite one to open it.

Undeterred, I entered, introduced myself and took the visitor’s seat, without an audible invitation. I started to explain what I wanted, and soon decided I was wasting my time completely. He was barely listening to me. I was not getting the impression that reuniting ‘old family’ was the first thing on his mind. It was a far cry from Fred and Tooting.

All that changed, though, when I mentioned Carl’s name. It was as if I’d flicked a switch. Those heavy eyelids leaped as if hooked by a fishing line; even some neck muscles got a workout. The mouth itself sputtered into life.

‘Did you say Carl Beard?’ it produced.

‘Yes. Carl Beard. Do you know him?’

‘Do I know him?’ he picked up a buff file that had been discarded on top of the detritus on the desk. He waved it at me like something was my fault. ‘I’m just about to file Carl in the cabinet of death,’ he indicated an enormous free-standing filing cabinet in the corner behind him, to his right.

‘The cabinet of death? Does that mean he’s dead?’ I could hardly believe that I had asked that question, but I wasn’t really sure how to respond.

‘No, it doesn’t mean he’s dead. He is dead, but that’s not what the cabinet of death means.’

He was dead. This was a shock. Why was he dead? How could somebody like Carl be dead already? He was what it meant to be alive. Maybe he was killed in a pub brawl. He would have barrelled himself into something that was none of his business and paid the price. That would be the way he would have gone.

‘The cabinet of death is for ex-employees. Once I’ve finished dealing with somebody, they go in there. I don’t often have to open it up and get anybody out.’

Did this mean he had only just died? I couldn’t be that unlucky, could I?

‘This is an odd case, in that he’s been dead for years. Nearly 20 years. And he only worked for us for a month. Back in those days, see, they got death in service benefits. I’ve had to pay half his salary to his widow every month until last week, when she shuffled off herself. Silly mare never remarried, otherwise I could have stopped the payments. You couldn’t exactly say I got my money’s worth from him.’

So he died on the job, not in the pub. Probably less messy.

‘Heart attack, while doing a basic oil change. He was underneath one of them new bendy things and his ticker pretty much exploded. Died on the spot. Nobody realised he was dead until the end of the shift and he was still under there. Colleague pulled him out. Stone cold. Still had hold of the wrench.’

I couldn’t believe it. To die and let your body go cold under a bus; nobody deserved that.

‘What happened to his wife?’ I asked. I had no idea why I asked, or what I would do with the information, if he gave me any. But I had to say something, and wanted to keep him talking until I had worked out what to do.

‘That train crash in Norway that’s been in the news. She was in it. Just retired and she fancied the Northern Lights. I never heard if she got to see them. Hope she did, for her sake.’

I felt deflated. I hadn’t even prepared myself for this sort of news. A few days ago I would have just mumbled some thanks and slunk off, but I was more forthright now.

‘Would you have their address?’ I asked. ‘I’d like to see if I can do anything for the family. I did know Carl, although I can’t say I knew his wife. What was her name?’

‘Diana. But I’m afraid I can’t hand out an address to any Tom or Dick who comes strolling in. That’s confidential information, you know.’ He gave me a defensive look, stood up and filed Carl carelessly in the cabinet of death, He closed it without locking it and sat down again. ‘So if that’s everything, I’ll see you out.’ I guessed it was.

---

My natural reaction was to head back to Tooting and see what Fred would make of it. I found him in the archive, scanning documents into a portable machine. We took a seat in the corner, where the small table and the low stools were.

‘You look terrible!’ he chuckled. ‘No joy in Summerstown?’

‘Couldn’t have gone much worse. Carl is dead. Worse than that, so is his widow. Worse than that, they won’t give me their address, so I’ve got no idea what my next move is.’

‘Dead? That’s not good. Bit of an anti-climax, especially after the work we’ve put in. Still, it was a good workout for the archive. Shame there’s no end product.’

‘Well, it’s not necessarily the end of the search. If I could find someone close enough to him, I might still be able to get what I need.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Fred said. ‘I thought it was Carl you were trying to track down. You’ve done that now, in a manner of speaking.’

I realised that I hadn’t told Fred exactly what I was looking for from Carl. I explained the whole story about Ricky the Touch and how he had become part of my fabric as a person. Carl had only really been my first port of call because I had no other ideas about how to get the search moving. I supposed that now I’d have to find some other route to the ultimate goal.

Fred perked up at this intelligence. ‘That’s not so bad. It’s just a nickname we’re trying to pin down. Carl was a gregarious sort, would you say?’

I would say, very much.

‘Then it’s likely that his friends or other colleagues would be aware of Ricky?’

It was fairly likely. I really had no idea.

‘Well then, all we need to do is find out where he hung out and ask around. You’d be surprised how easy it could still be!’

‘Except he died nearly 20 years ago and I have no way of finding out anything about him.’

‘Nonsense! Have you never heard of the electoral register? I’m even registered to search it online. There can’t be many Beards in the area. What did you say his wife’s name was?’ He picked his laptop up from the floor.

I told him, and within less than two minutes we had an address. I knew I was in the right place: Fred had a way of laughing off seemingly lost causes and tweaking their noses until they gave him what he wanted.

This time we went together. We found the house on Victoria Road easily: a hearse waited outside, and a giant wreath in the form of the word MUM was being slid carefully into it. We couldn’t possibly have picked a worse time. We walked straight past and didn’t stop until we reached the pub on the next corner. I didn’t need to say anything: Fred was inside like a shot. We sat at the bar, barely talking, for a while. Both of us had experienced funerals before, yet we were still dumbstruck. I think it was the frivolousness of our enquiry that rendered our planned visit so tawdry and undignified. A woman was being buried by her children and we were looking for Ricky the Touch.

‘How long until you reckon it’s acceptable to try again?’ he asked.

‘Who knows? Maybe a couple of weeks? Maybe longer?’ I wasn’t sure of the etiquette in that kind of scenario. But I did know I wouldn’t want some half-wit asking me about a nickname my long-dead Dad had had for someone who may or may not have been a mate nearly two decades ago. Not when I was dealing with sending my mother to the great beyond.

We tried to chat about other things. Timetable regulation, incentivising drivers, crime prevention methods. We both proposed similar ideas but couldn’t really find the energy to finalise our consensus. It was certainly a day for putting in the ground work, doing the blue-sky thinking and fleshing out a few embryos, but more than that we couldn’t have been expected to produce.

I shouted up another round: despite our lack of meaningful progress, neither of us felt much like leaving and finding out what was happening to us next. Three men filed in, all in dark suits and black ties. They stood at the bar together; one ordered pints. Some of the clientele approached them, shook hands, embraced, bought drinks, then left them in peace. I was transfixed. I could tell exactly who they were. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the barrel with Carl’s offspring. Each one of them could have been churned out by the same cooper that accounted for their father. It threw me back 20 years.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ whispered Fred as inconspicuously as he could. He had also felt the penny drop into his pint, although for different reasons. I nodded as loosely as my dry throat would let me. ‘Three sons, eh? That’s a result. Surely one of them knows something that might help us? We’ve struck lucky once more, my friend.’

---

He was probably right: this was undeniably as good a scenario as we could have expected. The two older men looked as if they ought to have known their dad pretty well, although the other was quite a bit younger. There was no doubting he was one of the clan though. Still, despite Fred’s optimism, the shock of coming face to face with Carl once more, which was effectively what had just happened, hit me hard.

What on Earth was I up to? Three brothers, already fatherless, had just said their final farewell to their mother. No matter at what age that happens, it’s a landmark moment for anybody. Finally cut adrift from the final stake which held them to a time of unshakeable innocence, life had just become a very different place for them all. And it was the cold reality of life that they were staring in the face. My needs, in comparison, were pathetic. Those three men were setting their lives in order, one rung at a time, while I was wasting mine on some damn fool mission. And what for? What did I hope to get out of it?

I took my leave of Fred and wandered home. From my scuffed suede boots to the frayed grimy collar of my linen jacket and an untended beard, I cut a totally plausible figure among the cracked, uneven paving stones and the crumbling garden walls. Even my dreams had become as crummy and low as the loveless suburbia which incubated them. Locked inside my flat I barely ate, didn’t answer the phone and let the junk mail pile up on the mat. Even reading, my normal escape route when the darkness descended, felt like too much effort. This was different. Ordinarily in those interludes, a kind of helplessness sat upon me; the idea that I simply wasn’t emotionally or intellectually equipped to deal with what life had served up. This time it was more personal. I, myself, had made the decision to embark on this undertaking, and was giving it everything I could. This time, I wasn’t letting things happen to me: I was creating the movement, and resistance couldn’t simply be explained away as faceless or random machinations. It was targeted right at me. No longer was my misery just the collateral damage wrought by the marching of time, I was being scuppered and taunted by a malign demon who looked straight into my eyes.

The feeling it evoked in me was more terror than depression. I knew enough to recognise that as a good thing. With an emotion that passionate as an ally, I gave myself a fighting chance. My refusal to disappear into my books allowed me the focus to propagate the righteous anger that would eventually lead me out.

Finally I rose from my exile. Fred had never doubted my return. Far from agitating for an immediate return to action, he gifted me the time I needed to readjust and refocus. We carried on with the digitisation of the archives. For the next few days I concentrated on the old menus from the staff canteen. Published weekly, never repeated, they told a gastronomic tale of the bus trade that was every bit as educational as the extensive photo section. The decline of suet and the rise of jerk chicken; the marginalisation of the potato in favour of spiced lentils; the near extinction of hake coinciding with the onset of scallops and tuna; all happening behind the gates of the bus depot half a generation before the High Street caught on. The social significance of the enterprise just kept on getting hammered home.

Each lunchtime we would wander down to Carl’s ‘local’. It was a longer walk than we needed to make, but we had been quite taken with the grungy honesty of the place on our first visit. It wasn’t as if we hoped to uncover anything. Speaking for myself, I can genuinely contend that I had no agenda other than lunch and a couple of well-kept pints. The same didn’t necessarily apply to Fred: in all the time I had known him, he had been one or two steps ahead of me, so it is possible that he was hatching something all that time, but I couldn’t see it as I sat there with him.

Hours were pretty flexible at the archive. There was nobody to report to, and we didn’t exactly have a deadline for the completion of the digitisation work. I challenged Fred about his motivation. Was he there for himself, to keep his mind occupied, to keep real life at bay, or did he really think he was providing a public service?

‘I don’t deny,’ he admitted, ‘that the main beneficiary of the Archive’s work is me. It gives me a focus I might otherwise struggle to find, and it keeps me out of the pub for the majority of the day. At the same time, I have created something truly wonderful in the form of the physical archive room, and that isn’t to be underestimated. Such creations are what makes the world what it is. Even if only a select handful of people ever witness it, its very creation is justification of itself. Besides which, it fulfils a valuable function in society. Otherwise, how would we be here right now having this discussion? My role is to be there when people come seeking help. I was there when you turned up, and also that journalist. How could anybody argue that isn’t valuable, socially speaking?’

‘But you do spend a large part of your time in here, or in the boozer next door to the Archive. How do you know that there aren’t people desperate to see you right now, who have a far more pressing need to uncover the Archive’s secrets than I did?’

‘I can simply refer you to the facts, once more. I have been called upon, twice, to provide guidance to those in need, and, twice, I have been available and able, to an extent, to fulfil what has been asked of me. Look at my face,’ he lifted his face to the light with playful ostentation, ‘does this face suggest unreliability in the face of human crisis? Of course it doesn’t. It seems self-evident that nobody has ever tried and failed to gain access to my treasure trove. I’m not even sure we ought to be discussing it. Besides which, could you imagine somebody with a more pressing need than you? Your requirement may seem trivial at first glance, but we both know better than that.’

We continued in this vein for a fortnight or more. Diligent in the morning, laissez-faire from lunchtime onwards. We weren’t about to become drunkards: it was more about the release of observations on the nature of the archive and its human actors into a zero-gravity environment that allowed them to settle where they chose. Regularly we would forget to even drink. The computerisation project crawled along like a glacier.

And one day, what was waiting to happen finally happened. One of Carl’s sons, the youngest, came into the pub for a pint. We had been half-heartedly debating the legality of ephemeral bus routes, and we stopped in our tracks. I was befuddled. A young man came into his local for a drink on a Friday. Nothing intrinsically strange about that, but, for us, the elephant had just raised itself onto its four feet and had started to rampage around the room.

We watched him a while. He seemed in his element. This was his local, after all. He sat at the far end of the bar, on a stool, alone but an integral part of the whole scene. Others would come and spend some time chatting or joking. Sometimes he would buy drinks for them, if they were needed. It was a scene you might find repeated thousands of times across the country at the very same time, but still we were spellbound. Eventually Fred took some action.

‘You have to go and talk to him. He’s totally at ease here. There’s no better place. And now is certainly the time. You won’t be interrupting anything. You’ll get a chance to explain who you are properly. This is better than we could have hoped for.’

He was right, and I felt uneasy. It wasn’t the sort of thing I would normally do, go and talk to a total stranger about something intensely personal. But, like Fred said, if I had conjured up in my imagination the ideal situation in which to raise the subject, it wouldn’t even have been as good as this. I had to get a hold of myself. I spent the time it took me to walk the length of the bar taking that hold. After a while I was right in front of him.

‘Hello. Please excuse me approaching you directly, but are you Carl and Diana Beard’s boy?’ He took his time finishing his draught of lager and looked at me narrowly.

‘I am. Who’s asking?’

I told him my name, and that I had worked with his Dad a long time ago at the bus company. I had been shocked and saddened to hear recently of his death. There were some things we used to talk about in the old days that were important to me and Carl had been the man I’d first thought of when I replayed those days. He would be able to help me fill in a few gaps that were driving me mad. ‘I know it’s a long time ago. Can you still remember your Dad from those days? I’m never sure what stays with people. I’ve still got specific memories of my old man, but I bet there’s a whole load I’ve lost over time.’

‘I’d help you if I could, mate. Thing is, I was only 5 when the old man snuffed it. I hardly remember him at all. Mum had photos, of course, so I’d recognise him if he walked past me in the street, but I can’t tell you much about what he was like. My brothers might be better, but they don’t live around here any more.’ My heart sank. I hadn’t realised he was quite that young. There was no way he’d be able to give me anything I needed regarding Carl. ‘Mind you, you might be in luck. Trevor there,’ he indicated a man hidden in an enormous black beard sitting halfway down the bar, back towards Fred, ‘he was a great old mate of Dad’s. Helped Mum loads when Dad died. Everyone thought something was going on, but there was nothing. He was just looking out for her. Made sure she got the pension from the mechanics’ company. She knew nothing about that. You might get something out of him, if you’re lucky.’

If I had been asked to sketch out the answer to my prayers 24 hours earlier, it would not have looked like Trevor, but I was on a mission now. I thanked Carl’s son and bit the bullet.

I grew more and more convinced that this day must have been lined up in the stars for some time, ready to spring upon me when I proved myself worthy through some act or acts of unchartable goodness, because it seemed that Trevor was in his best garrulous form.

‘Course I remember Carl, like he was still with us. One of my best mates for years. Total shocker when he kicked the bucket. Di was in pieces. I stepped in, did what I could to get her and the kids back on their feet. This place hasn’t been the same without him. I’ve always said that an evening with him used to roll along like a barrel down a cellar ramp. Unstoppable, he was, when he got going. Had some opinions you or I might not be proud of, but he was genuine. Happily fight for what he believed in, even if everyone else knew it was complete nonsense. Great man. His kids loved him like you wouldn’t believe. Worship, it was.’ Now was the time: I had to go for the jugular.

‘Did you ever hear him talk about someone called Ricky the Touch?’

Trevor looked straight at me for the first time since our conversation had started. He drained his glass and placed it back on the bar, pushing it minutely away from him. He seemed to have misplaced his talkative streak. Fred sprung into life: ‘Let me get that for you,’ he called from his end of the bar. ‘Same again for Trevor please!’ he said to the barman. We all waited in silence until the filled glass came back again.

‘Can’t say as I remember that name specifically,’ he mused. ‘Carl had names for people. He was a namer, that’s for sure. Johnny Two-Lunches, Terry the Tank, Lady Woof-Woof, The Great Crescendo. Most of the time people didn’t even know what name they’d been given. A lot of them didn’t last very long either. I’m not great with names, anyway. Real or not.’ He turned around to address a skinny man in the corner, dealing a cribbage hand with yellowstained fingers. ‘Here, Tony, this bloke’s asking about Carl. You might be able to help.’

‘Oh yeah. What’s up? Still causing trouble is he? From the other side?’

‘Don’t be stupid. He wants to find a home for one of Carl’s nicknames. What was it, mate? Reggie something?’

‘Ricky the Touch,’ I corrected him. It struck me, once again, now it was back out in the open after so long, how ridiculous it sounded. The name itself: Ricky the Touch. Ricky the Touch. You couldn’t say it, not even once, without being struck by its ludicrousness. And here I was shouting it across a pub over and over again.

‘Sounds like one of Carl’s, don’t it? Don’t ring a bell, though,’ he discarded two cards into his box, and looked up at Trevor. ‘Wait a minute. There was a youngster, I remember, always after Carl for a job. Obsessed with buses, he was. Desperate to get work at the depot. He’d drive him up the wall. He might have been called Ricky. I always pictured him a bit simple, but I don’t think he actually was. He came in here once or twice. After football, that was it. He played for another pub.’

‘Which pub, do you remember?’ Fred chimed in. He was in a heightened state of sensory comprehension. This was getting real.

‘Can’t remember that. Bloody hell. He must have been dead 20 years. Gimme a break.’

‘Of course. Sorry. Ridiculous question. You’ve been a great help though, all of you. Thank you.’ Fred had taken over now, and it seemed we were leaving. Not before we’d bought all three of them another pint. But he had to get out and plan our next move.

 

5.

The first job was to locate the records for the pub league. Fred’s skills as a self-trained archivist made that a task of almost laughable simplicity. I would barely have known where to start.

There were seven other pubs, apart from Carl’s, in the league. All I had to do was visit them all and ask if anybody knew Ricky. Simple. I needed to get over my self-consciousness about voicing his name. How was I to do that? It was impossible to say it out loud and not feel as if I’d just confessed to my greatest secret perversion through an industrial-scale PA system. But my dignity came secondary to the challenge at hand. Besides, there was no time to be concerning myself with that: I was standing on the threshold of The Five Bells.

The pub was almost empty. Not just of people, but of furniture and adornment. More barn than pub. I didn’t like it one little bit. It was chill. But, do the job, get it over with, I exhorted myself. If the answer is no then I can get out of here in no time, and if it’s yes, then……. I crossed the frozen tundra to the bar. Nobody gave a crumb of attention my way, not even the hag behind the bar. I ordered a drink. I thought that would be a good starting point, although it didn’t make me very popular with Madam Sourface. It arrived, though, eventually. Even she couldn’t bring herself to deny a man a pint. I pounced, while she was almost lending me some of her attention.

‘Thanks. I don’t suppose you know of a bloke who goes by the name of Ricky the Touch? He might play football, or have played in the past, for this pub.’ There, it was out. Would she pick at it, or just let it drop to the floor to be trodden in with the fresh beer that daily laid a new epidermis of tack to the floor on both sides of the formica bar?

For a start, she actually looked directly at me. That was either a very good or a very bad thing. I had no time to decide. She threw a glance across to the only other occupant of the barstools, gave him a short nod, then returned her noxious glare to whatever void it generally occupied. Involuntarily I turned to look at the half-man, half-mural she had so recently silently addressed. Without shifting his gaze from the racing pages, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of bone or possibly mother-of-pearl that sat luxuriously in the hand sent to retrieve it. It belonged there, alright. A slight click was all it took to reveal to me exactly why it seemed so at home in his malicious mitt. The blade, as long again as the handle, but presumably considerably sharper, winked at me under the weak bar lights. He let it drop in his hand, the blade pointing directly downwards, and jammed it into the surface of the bar. His left hand went back to its previous job and turned the pages. Doncaster next.

I climbed off my stool and walked cautiously back across the permafrost. I only took a breath once I was safely outside, among the welcoming choke of traffic smog. Menace, that was what I had just been served up. Pure, neat menace. Not even on the rocks. Maybe I had been right to be worried about this part of my search. People tend not to appreciate being asked questions that they can’t contextualise. And they can have unpredictable reactions.

Surely they wouldn’t all react the same way, though. I plodded along London Road, regaining my composure and plucking up courage for the next one. Part of me couldn’t believe I was continuing with the lunacy, but there was no way I was letting Fred down, after all he had done for me. As it happened, the second pub on my list caused me no bother at all. It wasn’t even a pub any more. Was it strange that it had become a pine furniture showroom? No stranger than the Mexican ingredients wholesalers to which the third one had graduated. Three potential leads followed, nothing to show for it except some light emotional scarring. I decided to leave the rest to the next day. An evening of not thinking about Ricky at all might do me some good.

And my luck did seem to have changed with the advent of a new day. Pub number four, The Baker’s Arms, stood proudly on the Streatham Road where it ever had. Although, from the moment I stepped in, I could sense something distinctly non-footballing about it. Quirky old wooden tables sporting wax-dripped candleholders; a patchwork of leather sofas; huge chalkboards for specials or quotations; an ambience that certainly did not encourage post-match bravado and feats of low-class drinking. And the girl behind the bar was smiling.

I didn’t order a drink there; I figured it was probably a bit early for any unnecessary alcohol. I asked her how long she had worked there. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t very long. The longest serving member of staff, she told me, was the manager, who had been there since the latest relaunch around a year earlier.

‘Any of the old regulars still drink in here?’ I asked. I might as well have been asking the Dalai Lama if he fancied coming out for a steak with me.

‘I don’t reckon so,’ she said, looking around the atmospheric cocoon critically. ‘I mean, where would we put them?’

I had to give it to her. She had hit the nail on the head. I thanked her and left. Fred would have liked it there: plenty of game on the specials board.

My next port of call was not 60 yards away. I could see it as soon as I had turned the first corner out of the Baker’s. This had seemed like such a simple and foolproof idea when Fred had conjured it up, yet it was going so spectacularly badly that I was starting to get the sense of victimisation once more. At least the next pub was still a pub, and it was open, and there were people in it and it looked clean and safe. And things couldn’t get any worse.

I felt like it was an idea to order in this one. A proper boozer. Behind the bar was a well turned out man in his early 30s, I would have said. He had the bearing of a landlord and owned his space entirely, but he seemed almost too fit and healthy to have such an indoor occupation. The plentiful blond hair on his head was repeated in the copious eyebrows and on his tanned and solid-looking forearms. He was in charge, that much was for sure, but he spent enough of his time not here serving up beer and scratchings. A good balance, I surmised.

Ordering my second pint, I was ready to talk:

‘Sorry to be nosey, but are you the landlord here?’

‘I certainly am. Can I help you with anything in that capacity? Apart from the pint of course, which is £3.20, please.’ I handed over the right change and he held on to it, looking at me.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘All my life. In a manner of speaking. I’m the third generation of my family to have the licence here. My grandpa took the place over in the early 50s. He was a professional footballer. Got injured and had to call it a day before he really got started. Tragic. Word was that he could have played for England. He stayed here for about 30 years, handed it over to my Dad when he’d had enough. Funny thing was, owning a pub in those days was more of a money-spinner than playing football. Wouldn’t believe that now, would you?’

‘Madness,’ I agreed. ‘So, did he play for the pub team then?’

‘You bet! We were founder members of the league. Gramps was like the aristocrat of the whole thing. People used to show up just to watch him play. We won the league for the first seven years it was running, until he really had to jack it in when his knees went totally. Then my Dad did, what, 26 or 27 years. I took over 5 years ago.’

‘So you’ve grown up here really?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Do you, or have you, played for the team too?’

‘Of course. There hasn’t been a team without one of us in it. My turn now, and I’ll be making sure my boy carries that on once he’s old enough.’

This was looking more promising than I had any right to expect. I couldn’t monopolise his time for much longer, so I had to get to the point.

‘Do you recall, at any point in the last 20 years or so, somebody playing who went by the name of Ricky the Touch?’

His eyes narrowed and something went clunk inside him. Followed by me.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Err. Nothing. I’m looking for somebody, but I only know him as Ricky the Touch. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Who are you calling a touch?’

‘No, no, I’m not calling anybody anything. I just know of someone who goes by that name, and I know he played in your league, so I’m trying to locate him.’

‘I’ll ask you again, before I start to lose it. Who are you calling a touch?’ His hand was tightening around an empty on the bar in front of him.

‘Listen! Honestly, I’m not calling anybody a touch. I’m just looking for someone. Someone who nobody has seen for nearly 20 years! I just want to talk to him.’

That did it. Whatever I had said sent him over the edge. He picked up the glass he had been manhandling, smashed the top off it on his side of the bar and lunged at me with it. I was almost frozen with terror for a second, but I managed to get a hold of myself just in time to sway to one side before he landed his blow. It was so sharp that I hardly felt anything, although I saw the shoulder and sleeve of my shirt start to stain a deep claret colour. I had no idea what he had made contact with, but a quick test with my left hand confirmed what I must have already known: I was bleeding profusely. Sadly, while I was finding that out, he had delved beneath the bar and re-emerged with a monstrous iron bar. He leaped onto the bar like a moon-crazed werewolf and took an almighty swing. Once again my left side took the brunt. I had escaped the worst, but the pain was shooting down my arm from the shoulder. I couldn’t move it.

The force of the blow had thrown him off the bar, too, and he lay on the ground, looking like he was in some kind of pain. I wasn’t about to hang around and compare agony, and I ran. Regulars crowded around him and let me through unmolested, which was a huge relief. One of them opened the door for me.

I ran until I reached a children’s playground. Not that I felt any safer there, but I simply couldn’t run any more. My whole sleeve was red and clammy, and pain was screaming from my shoulder directly into my ear. I had the feeling that the bleeding had actually abated, but as I tried to lift my hand to confirm, the pain reached a crescendo and I remember nothing more.

---

Next thing, my phone was ringing. I came to my senses, realised my left arm was going nowhere and stuck out the right in the general direction of the buzzing. I was groggy and didn’t manage to get to it before it settled back to silence. At least I was awake, and at least I was alive. I was in a bed, but it wasn’t mine. No doubt about it: this was St George’s. I had a window bed and there was no mistaking that view. The one place you don’t want to be when you’re not well. My left arm was in a tight sling and had been cleaned up a bit. It wasn’t covered in blood, I mean. My right was free to roam, and it picked up my phone. Twelve missed calls. It started to ring again. This time I answered.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ It was Fred. ‘I’ve been calling for almost 24 hours.’ I looked at the time on the phone: just after 10am. It must have been tomorrow at the very least. ‘What have you been up to?’

I told him all I knew, which wasn’t a huge amount. About the new gastropub, and the charming landlord who had turned on me, my lucky escape, my manic flight and my subsequent waking in a hospital bed. I wasn’t too sure on many of the details, so thought it best to leave them out.

‘Christ. Who’d have thought it? It’s a jungle out there. But, listen, I might have something.’ This time he had been concentrating on the old newspaper articles. He had deliberately started with the year when I worked for the firm, and had turned something up. It was a small piece on Carl’s death itself. Why hadn’t we thought of looking there before? It had been an unusual enough death to be of interest to a local paper. He read it out to me. ‘And here’s the interesting bit,’ he paused a second to build up the moment. ‘“The body was discovered by a colleague, 20-year-old Richard Jones, who described the find as ‘horrific’ and ‘something that will stay with me forever. Carl was a good friend of mine, and he had even got me the job working at the depot. I can’t imagine what life will be like there from now on,’ added a distraught Jones.”’ Fred let the whole quotation hang in the air while I adjusted my position to give my shoulder some respite.

Could this be him? Could it be Ricky the Touch who had actually found Carl’s lifeless body? Would there be some kind of irony in that? The man whose identity had been rendered an unexhumable secret by Carl’s death was the one who had pulled him out from under that bendy bus.

Fred was already well past that point, of course. ‘I’ve checked the records for the Summerstown lot that Carl worked for. There’s a Richard Jones on the invoices. Right up until the time when we merged. Haven’t got anything after that. But there’ll definitely be something on him in the office. He might still work for them, and, even if he doesn’t, he’ll be in the cabinet of death.’

He was right again. I was discharged with a badly rearranged collar bone and half an earlobe: nothing life threatening, and nothing that would stop me sniffing out the marrow within this latest lead. Returning to that musty office seemed a much better bet than wandering into neighbourhood boozers and asking odd questions.

I found the same guy in the same pose behind the same shameless desk. He certainly wasn’t pleased to see me. Mention of Jones’ name brought him out of himself once more.

‘Listen, pal, I’m not liking all these questions. What is it you’re after? I’ve already had the Beards on the blower about you. They figured out that I must have put you on to them. People don’t like strangers sniffing about them for no good reason. And I’m not supposed to pass on any information at all. If this gets out, my business is toast. So from now on I’m telling you bugger all. Especially about that toe-rag.’

‘So you know him? I know he worked for you in the past. Does he still now?’

He stood up. ‘I’m not surprised you’ve been smashed up, fella. Take it from me, you ask too many questions. Don’t you know when to stop? Why can’t you just leave it? Look, I’m not going to tell you anything, and I really want to avoid manhandling you, state you’re in, so it’s probably best if you just do one now.’

I took his point. I certainly wasn’t about to put myself in any further physical danger, so I trudged down the stairs and back into the grime of Garratt Lane. I called Fred and arranged to meet in our local.

All I had was a possible name to go on. Asking questions was actually getting quite scary now: I was getting on the wrong side of everybody. The pubs were a dead end. There were two more from the league to investigate, but I wasn’t doing that until I was back in the peak of physical fitness, so I could run like hell if necessary. The Summerstown troll was clamming up out of fear – he had no scruples about this, but was easily bullied. We needed a different approach. A safer one.

‘It’s not easy,’ Fred said. ‘I’ve searched on Richard Jones. Lots of them locally, as you’d expect, but none that really fit the profile for our man. We need to think creatively around what we know about him.’

‘Well, we know he once found a dead body while at work, he worked, or works, for this outfit that has a cabinet of death in its office, not to mention a mystery room behind an ominous office door, and that his employer considers him a toe-rag. Beyond that, he may or may not be, or have been, called Ricky the Touch by a man long departed, and might be a pub footballer. Not an awful lot, I’d say.’

‘Pretty reasonable summary. The only concrete thing we’ve got is the contractor in Summerstown. We’ve got to find a way of getting the information out of him. It sounds like he’s had the frighteners put on him good and proper, though. The Beard boy and his mates didn’t seem the sort, I thought.’

‘Could have been his brothers, I suppose. He might have spoken to them about us.’

‘Hmmmmm…….’ Fred supped his pint and gazed aimlessly. But by the time he turned deliberately back to me, there was a knowing grin plastered on his fizzog. What kind of hare-brained scheme was coming my way now? ‘Of course! Why has it taken so long to come up with this?’

‘What?’

‘We’ll break in to that excuse for an office. He’s in that cabinet of death somewhere, or the cabinet of the living. Whatever, he’s in the office. I can tell that, and I’ve never even met the slug that runs it. He must be a hopeless poker player.’

It sounded like an insane idea. I already considered myself lucky to have escaped with relatively minor injuries, and that was from doing something a long way from illegal. This could be the worst idea ever.

‘Nonsense. Piece of piss. This bloke sounds like a total idiot. He’s no match for us. Tell me about the layout of the office. How do we get in? What are the locks like? Where are the weak points?’

I had no idea whatsoever. I hadn’t thought to take in those kinds of details when I was in there. Either time. There was a standard-looking door to the street, then the fairly flimsy one on the second floor that was his office. From what I remembered, I was fairly confident there was a similar door on the first landing, too. As far as the inside of the room went, I could clearly picture two filing cabinets, because they had been directly referred to. Both looked a bit rickety. Vintage, I would call them if I were to be kind. The whole environment had a sense of chaos about it. The desk was big, I seemed to recall, and every square inch was covered with something that may or may not have belonged in an office. The miserable occupant of the chaotic office was probably one of those people who maintained he had a complex and efficient system that only he was intelligent enough to fully understand. That was rubbish, of course. He had no idea what was going on under there. They never do.

‘Well, that’s not exactly the most impressive feat of observation I’ve ever encountered. You just aren’t suspicious enough,’ Fred said with a distant lilt. He had been hoping for more, but that wasn’t really my strong point. ‘What a comfortable life you must have led, to be so complacent and trusting! That’s evolution and civilisation for you, I suppose. The majority of life’s dangers have been removed, and now we have to fill our conscious registers with less life-affirming irrelevancies.

‘Still, never mind. We are where we are. I’ve got some kind of plan forming just behind my eyes. I need to see the office if we’re to do this properly,’ he looked at me accusingly. He could be harsh. ‘I can get in there as a prospective punter. A mechanic, just moved to the area, looking for work. HGVs, PSVs. Surely I can engineer enough time in there to get what I need.’

It sounded plausible enough, but I was uneasy at the direction he was taking. Even asking innocent enough questions with no hidden agenda had got me into serious bother already. Deliberately engineering a fake encounter for the express purpose of joint-casing seemed to be asking for trouble.

‘Relax, everything will be fine. I’ve got to make sure I don’t spook him, since I’m our last bullet, but I can handle that. All I have to do is get enough information so we can plan how we get in without having to use too much brute force. I’m sure more difficult things have been successfully carried off in the past. In this sense, chaos is good. It’s a whole lot easier to break systems that aren’t well designed. This one doesn’t sound like it’s designed at all. More like the elements have all fallen in a heap and been arranged by the elements over years of neglect. In other words, we’ll probably find his filing cabinets are left unlocked, or the keys are in a basket marked ‘filing cabinet’. I’m looking forward to this one. Spend a few days learning his movements and his habits, then hit him hard.

‘Would you hold the fort here in the meantime? It’s pretty unlikely that anybody will show up, but I’m not comfortable with leaving the place totally unmanned. We’ve still got the route maps to get into the system. That could take some time, if we’re to do it properly.’

I was glad to. We chatted for the rest of the day about the various properties a digitised route map ought to have. They are surprisingly rich items.

 

6.

We both had our jobs to do. I cracked on with the scanning and classification of the routes. I decided to tackle them in topological order, starting with those which reached the most distant point from the depot, and moving inwards toward the less ambitious. Fred had filed them numerically in the shelving, so it took quite some work before I could even get started in earnest, but it was important to take a fresh approach. Who could tell what secrets these routes might reveal about themselves during such a forced reappraisal?

Meanwhile, Fred was ensconced somewhere inconspicuous up Garratt Lane, learning everything there was to learn about our slovenly target. He showed back up some time after 6 on the first day, looking pretty pleased with himself. It was too early to be forming any firm theories about his movements, but one thing he could be sure of was the sign above the street door advertising offices to let. We supposed that must have related to the first floor: he hadn’t seen anybody else entering or leaving the building during the day. I cast my mind back to the scene on my two visits: no To Let sign came back to me. In fact, I could barely picture the door to the street any more. I resolved to take more note of my surroundings in future.

The next two days passed in a similar manner. Each evening Fred would return for a debrief, armed with titbits of local knowledge which were already building up quite a comprehensive picture. In the morning this paragon of industriousness would show up at his office at 9.30. An hour later, like clockwork, he would nip across the road for a coffee, which he was in no hurry to finish. The hour between 12 and 1 would find him in the pub almost directly opposite. A roast beef sandwich and two pints. He would surface again at 3pm, which seemed like a long stretch of solid uninterrupted graft, and Fred took it that at least 30 minutes of that period was spent unconscious. At 4.30 he would lock up for the day. Not what you might call the most demanding of regimes.

‘We’re not short of options here. It’s possible we can rent the office on the first floor, although I’d rather avoid that if possible. There are plenty of hours in the day for us to mount an external offensive. The street door locks are laughable. Even you could probably force them without looking like you’re trying, and drawing attention to yourself.’ I was glad of his faith in me, but even gladder that I knew he’d never ask me to do such a thing. ‘But tomorrow I’m going to have a better gander. I’ve been preparing a CV, and I think it’s ready now. It’s not as if it has to stand up to much scrutiny. Just as long as it gets me through the door, then we’re cooking.’

This must have been how he was when he decided to build that wondrous archive. Totally focussed, totally confident of his approach and the inevitable successful outcome. My head was swimming.

The next day he planned to be at the Summerstown office first thing. No point in hanging around once the die had been cast, he maintained. He was back at the archive before 10.30, the proud owner of a grin the size of the Thames Barrier.

‘I love it!’ he beamed. ‘I should do this sort of thing for a living. I’m made for it!’ I laid down my scanner and listened to his triumphant tale.

He had arrived at the second floor office at 9.35. Our target had been inside for five minutes. Strange, how somebody so seemingly random could be so predictable in his habits and so pinpoint in their execution. He certainly hadn’t given the impression that he was in the slightest bit interested in finding any form of employment for Fred, the newly arrived master mechanic. But autopilot kicked in and somehow he agreed to take the long schlep to the copier, beside the mystery door, to duplicate Fred’s imaginary past. In this very room, my partner’s twisted flights of fantasy were taking their first steps towards permanent entrenchment in human consciousness. Or at least they would as soon as the fuser unit had warmed up. He enjoyed that idea for a few fleeting seconds, until something far more relevant took hold.

On the desk, clearly visible from his angle, underneath the morning paper, a haphazard set of keys. Amongst them, a small tag marked “office”. It was too perfect and he suppressed an enormous grin.

‘I pocketed them straightaway, while he was messing with his antique machinery. I knew I had until 10.30 and his well-deserved morning break before he’d want them again. So I got right up, made some excuse about having to meet somebody by 9.45, vaguely arranged to come back later to discuss opportunities and headed down the stairs. 26 of them. He barely even acknowledged that I was acting a bit strange. There was a key cutting stall in the station. 10 minutes, that’s all it took. 10 minutes and I had a full set of his keys. Full access to all his secrets. Simple as that. I reckoned I might even get back up there before he’d managed to take a copy of my dodgy CV.

‘I headed straight back. I knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, but there was a distinct possibility he’d pick up his paper before that and notice they weren’t there, if he could even remember where he’d put them. I tested the outer door ones on the way in. Worked fine. I couldn’t test the internal ones with him in there.

‘I wouldn’t say he was pleased to see me, and I was right – the copier was still sputtering into life and my CV was sitting on top. I couldn’t work out what I had disturbed him in the middle of, but it seemed there was something. I explained that I had just seen an old colleague and that he had lined up a job for me, starting tomorrow, so there was no need to register here. If he could have been bothered to show any emotion at all, it would probably have been relief. And, to think, he had made that whole trip to the copier and switched it on and everything. I don’t think that happened very often. The lightbulb in the ceiling was flickering. I took back my work of fiction, yet another one destined to die an unread death, and popped the keys down on top of the copier. I reckoned it’d probably confuse him for a minute or so when he found them there, but I don’t suppose he’ll give it too much thought. Fact is, we can now get in whenever we choose! How about that?’

I was, frankly, growing tired of marvelling at his ability to pull off seemingly impossible things with the minimum of fuss. Was a never-ending supply of self-belief really all one needed to spawn superhuman powers?

Unsurprisingly, Fred declared that the next day would be the ideal time to execute Operation Somatosensory. When he was hot, he was hot.

‘We’ll take up position around 1600,’ he began, once our lunch had arrived. I half expected him to be drawing this up on a board, brandishing a long and official-looking pointer. Difficult to argue with one of those. But this had to be done verbally and held only in human memory. Mustn’t leave a trace. ‘That way we can be sure he leaves at 1630, as usual. We’ll give it half an hour and move in at 1700. Then we’ve got all night, until 0930, to find Ricky the Touch. But if we’re not out of there and back here with a pint by quarter past six, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs and stay there until your cows come home to roost.’

As usual, his reading of the situation was spot-on. By 5 o’clock, the coast had been clear for 30 minutes and we made our move, unfussily and with purpose. We got through the street door without attracting any attention, and the pressure lifted considerably. The second floor door offered similar resistance, or lack of it. It was 5.01, we were in and we had 16 hours or more to locate what we needed.

It took us approximately 48 seconds to lay hands on Richard Jones’ file in the unsecured filing cabinet of the living. We found it surprisingly comprehensive as we sat and digested it. Employment history, current address, professional qualifications, everything. Fred took two photos of every page with his miniature camera. He refused to use the copier, lying flaccid in the corner. It was an untrustworthy and temperamental beast, he had already witnessed, and he didn’t like to make himself reliant on any technology outside his own control.

While he was taking the snaps, I was coming to terms with how such a thing had been so ridiculously possible.

‘This beggars belief,’ I paced around the office. ‘Security here is about as close to zero as you could get without it becoming illegal. Is this guy totally indifferent?’

‘You’ve met him, haven’t you? That is the bearing of an indifferent man, I’d suggest. And besides, is there anything here that anyone would be interested in stealing?’ He added whilst framing his compositions in the best light he could muster. He had brought a tiny torch, which was doing a reasonable job as a kind of permanent flashbulb.

I pointed out, as calmly as I could, why we were actually on the premises at that moment. To consider the home address of Ricky the Touch non-valuable was the sort of thing that had got this country into the kind of trouble from which it was only now painfully emerging. Fred looked at me askance. He was about to say something when we heard a none-too-distant door slamming. He switched off his torch and we both froze.

A couple of slipper-shod steps was enough to get me to the safe side of the office door. From there I could confirm our fears: somebody was climbing the stairs. Slowly and wheezily, but it was climbing, whichever way you framed it. And it would result in a face-to-face meeting before too long. I cushioned the office door shut, let the latch off and signalled to Fred; our only chance was the mystery door. It was locked, but he had the entire set of keys. The first as yet unused specimen had no effect, but the second one turned smoothly, despite his unsteady grip. He turned the handle silently and we entered.

I thought I had been in empty rooms before, until then. Our only line of defence here was the door through which we had just entered. If he were to open that we would be sunk. On the far wall was a multi-tiered rack housing any manner and shape of what appeared to be carving tools. The array of so many subtly different blades was macabre enough to give me a violent chill, especially given our current vulnerable position. Even the impressively animated collection of wooden beasts dotted around the window sills couldn’t calm my immediate concern. How the hell had I got myself into this situation? My left arm was in a sling, its companion ear was still bandaged up after recent violent trauma and now I was about to confirm the suspicions of one of the slowest-witted know-nothings I had ever had the misfortune to come across.

Outmanoeuvred by an intellectual oil tanker. Helplessly exposed under the burning orange of the setting sun, which was streaming smugly into the studio. Unwitting or not, this had to be a low point.

Fred’s control of heartrate, on the other hand, would have pleased a professional hitman. He summed up the situation no quicker than I had, but his reaction was more constructive than fatalistic. He locked us in and ushered me soundlessly up against the wall behind the door. It was the most concealed place in the room. If the creature were to open the door for any reason, he wouldn’t clock us unless he actually entered. This spot gave us the best chance.

We heard the main office door open. I was struck by how scrupulously clean this room, workshop, studio, whatever, was. I took it that our friend had carved these stunningly realistic animals with his own hands and the tools immaculately billeted in their hanging places. Yet there was no sign of detritus: no wood shavings, abandoned drafts, human flesh, anything on the floor. The tools themselves gleamed with sharp, honed health. There was some organic wear on the handles, but that was just a sign of their utility.

Picturing such an uncoordinated lump, judging by the disorganised racket he was currently making in the front office, so skilfully creating these works through patience and vision and control was difficult but rewarding. I concentrated on a single-minded squirrel transporting an acorn back to its nest under the watchful eye, if I was not greatly mistaken, of an interested predator while remembering (me, not the squirrel) not to breathe and attempting to form an image of just what exactly was happening on the other side of this wall to which we were glued. I wondered what Fred had done with the file on Ricky. It was a long shot, but the guy might notice it and wonder why it was out and on top of his landfill-inspired filing system. I shot him a concerned glance. He winked and patted his pocket softly. He knew exactly what I was thinking. Fortunately he had got there himself a while ago, and not about 3 minutes too late, as I had.

I calmed down a little bit. I figured if he had come back to find something in the office there would be no call for him to come in here – I didn’t see much overlap between the two rooms – but the prospect of a physical meeting still hung there like a sword. I wouldn’t be happy we were in the clear until he had actually left the building. And I still had to breathe every now and then.

Finally, the noise we had been willing for some time. The slam of a drawer, three lumpen footsteps, a pause, two more of the same and the blessed click of latch into housing as the office door got between him and us once more. I could almost hear Fred counting the impacts on the blameless staircase, his look of self-satisfaction when we heard the distant rattle of the street door indicating that each stair had been honestly negotiated.

Fred put out his arm, to bid me remain where I was. I was more than happy to comply. He unlocked the studio door as carefully as he had earlier locked it and he floated across to the street window. Standing well back, he extracted a small mirror from his inside pocket, trying various angles until he got one he was happy with. He watched for several minutes and eventually replaced the mirror and signalled a clear coast.

We still said nothing. He replaced Ricky’s file in the correct cabinet and we removed ourselves from the scene of our latest crime as unobtrusively as possible. I almost forgot to replace my carpet slippers with outdoor shoes before emerging into the street, but Fred wasn’t about to let any kind of detail derail our endeavour.

---

The time was 6.15 and we were on our second pint. We had printed out our ill-gotten gains and sat agape in front of the evidence. Mostly I was concentrating on the home address. West Norwood. Fred was more interested in the litany of clients who had benefitted from Ricky’s expertise over the years. He had graduated from buses to the tubes at Morden depot since those days, but it was definitely the resumé of the man who had found Carl’s dead body.

We went together to West Norwood the next morning. I was too ungainly and too conspicuous with my injuries for close surveillance work, and Fred was happy to temporarily shut the archive at such a vital stage.

Ricky looked as if he had aged well. He must have been a few years younger than I was, but he had apparently led a more stress-free life. If his employment history was anything to go by, he certainly hadn’t been idle for any period of time, and he looked happy in his daily routine. At least, as far as we could tell. He got in his car almost directly outside his front door. He drove to work.

‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ Fred reasoned. I expect you’d have to go up to Tulse Hill and get a Sutton train. That’s a fag, and they’re not even that regular.’

I glared at him as hard as I could. Still, we knew where Ricky worked, so Fred staked out the depot for a couple of days. Sure enough, he arrived around half an hour after leaving home. This was definitely the right bloke. A harder worker than his pimp, too, it would seem. He was at the coal face by 8, and didn’t emerge until 5.30. His lunch didn’t include a couple of pints of fermented Wandle water, which would come as a relief to any regular users of the Northern Line.

That was fine, as I had decided I would feel more comfortable approaching him in his own back yard. I had had to start thinking about that now. This was our man, no question, and I had started to rehearse the important moment.

We took it in turns to keep tabs on him between 6am and midnight. During the working week, all he did was go to work. Not even a midweek pint, a cribbage match, 5-a-side; nothing. On Friday Fred followed him home in a cab. He was ridiculously excited.

As usual, his agitation was vindicated. Not half an hour later, our subject emerged. Fresh shirt, smarter shoes, a veritable spring in his step. We covered the quarter of a mile at a respectful distance, and took up residence in a corner with an unimpeded view of him, peaceful at the bar, presumably waiting for somebody but enjoying his solitude while it lasted.

---

‘You might have 2 minutes, you might have an hour,’ Fred had this eyebrows-raised way of pressuring you into immediate action without sounding like he was.

My peripheral vision disappeared; drowned in adrenaline, I expect. I walked as slowly as I could, which was breakneck by anybody else’s standards. I had to clear my throat before I got there. This couldn’t be croaked out.

‘Excuse me,’ I started. Good, an even enough voice, and clear, over the background noise which was just the right volume for this sort of conversation.

‘Yes mate, what can I help you with?’ Did he sound like Ricky the Touch? I supposed he might have done. Or did he? What if he wasn’t? This could be embarrassing, or puzzlingly ridiculous at the very least. I turned to look at Fred. He would be mortified if I couldn’t carry this through. In fact, he would carry it for me and never let me forget. I turned back and jumped in with both feet.

‘This might sound peculiar, and please don’t take it the wrong way. It’s not meant in any “way” at all. It’s a genuine and harmless question and I don’t mean anything by it except wanting to know the answer.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Ricky the Touch sat up straight in his stool. ‘Now you’ve got me on the edge of my seat. Looks like you might have had some interesting experiences asking the same question before,’ he inspected my shoulder and ear. If only he knew the half of it. We stared at each other in silence for a while. ‘Well, spit it out then!’ he grinned at me. I felt safe enough, yet I still had to squeeze the question out of myself like hardened mastic.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve been known, at any time, and this is a name I’ve only heard in passing,’ literally, I thought, and if only I hadn’t been passing, ‘as Ricky the Touch?’ My natural reaction was to recoil slightly as soon as the words appeared, but he remained calm. He thought about it for a minute and a broad smile spread right across his youthful face.

‘Carl. Carl Beard.’ The smile disappeared for a few moments, and returned. ‘Did you know Carl, then?’ he asked me.

‘Not very well. I worked with him for a short while. I was a bus driver.’

‘Oh really? I worked with him, God rest his soul, at the bus depot too. When were you there? We might have been there at the same time!’ I knew we hadn’t, but I went along with it. I wasn’t about to tell him that I knew every place he’d worked at in the last 20 years, and how many O-Levels he had. We got past the initial pleasantries pretty painlessly.

‘So, how did you get the name “Ricky the Touch”?’

‘Well, it’s because I was a bit of a touch, isn’t it?’

‘Right, and your name’s Ricky.’

‘Yeah. At least it was. Nowadays I’m Richie to everyone, but back then I had always been Ricky.’

‘Fine, but why “The Touch”? What is a touch, anyway, in this sense?’

‘You know, someone who’s a bit of a touch. It’s like if you can fool someone easy, make ‘em look stupid. Carl was always doing that to me. Taking the piss.’

‘Really? That’s the reason?’

‘Suppose so. I don’t really know. I couldn’t even remember it until you came up 2 minutes ago. Carl loved to give names. Probably had four or five for me in the time I knew him. Wow. Carl,’ he chuckled quietly to himself. ‘I haven’t thought about him in years. He reminded me of a big round barrel full of something rosy looking and lethal. Asking to be embraced. Full of life. Full of mischief. Full of shit, mostly. But I couldn’t help but love him. Devastated me when I found him. Oh, I don’t suppose you know that, do you? It was me that found his body. Stone cold, he was. Been dead for hours. We should’ve known. He’d never kept his mouth shut for that long before in his life.’ No, I had no idea.

All of a sudden, Ricky the Touch jerked his head up and looked past me towards the door. I turned to follow his eyes. This must have been his date. She looked nice. He introduced me, apologising for not knowing my name. I exchanged brief greetings, thanked him for finding time to chat to me, withdrew and deposited myself next to Fred. I felt drained and incapable of movement.

After a while I couldn’t ignore his inane grin any longer. I turned to face him.

‘What? What’s so bloody wonderful? What’s that stupid grin for?’ It drooped a few degrees.

‘I don’t know what you expected, but if it was anything but this, you were fooling yourself. Face it, we’ve done it!’

‘I know. Of course you’re right, but can you just stop being right for a few minutes? I need to work out what to do with this moment.’

He was nothing if not the sensitive type, and dutifully left me in silence for approaching half an hour. Finally I got up to get a couple more pints.

‘Same again?’ I asked, halfway to the bar already.

‘Yes please. And can you order some chips? I’m bloody starving.’