Page 27 of The Veteran

‘For the record, full name and address.’

When he reached the borough where Nobby lived, he stopped.

‘Willesden? But that’s miles away.’

‘I know where it is,’ said the pensioner. ‘I live there.’

‘And the dead man?’

‘Of course. That’s where we met, dinwee?’

He was one of those cockneys who feel obliged to turn statements into questions by adding an unnecessary interrogative at the end.

‘You came all this way to tell me about him?’

‘Seemed only right, ’im being dead an’ all,’ said Nobby. ‘You got to get the bastards what did that to ’im. Bang ’em up.’

‘I got them,’ said Burns. ‘The court just let them go.’

Clarke was shocked. Burns found an ashtray in a drawer and the old man stubbed out.

‘That’s well out of order. I don’t know what this bloody country’s coming to.’

‘You’re not the only one. Right, the dead man. His name?’

‘Peter.’

Burns wrote it down.

‘Peter what?’

‘Dunno. I never asked him.’

Burns counted slowly and silently from one to ten.

‘We think he had come this far east on that Tuesday to put flowers on a grave in the local cemetery. His mum?’

‘Nah. He didn’t have no parents. Lost them as a small child. Orphan boy. Raised at Barnardo’s. You must mean his Auntie May. She was his house mother.’

Burns had an image of a small boy, bereft and bereaved, and of a kindly woman trying to put his shattered little life back together. Twenty years after her death, he still came on her birthday to put flowers on her grave. Eighteen days ago it was an act that cost him his life.

‘So where did you meet this Peter?’

‘The club.’

‘Club?’

‘DSS. We sat side by side, every week. They give us chairs. Me, with the arthritis, ’im with the gammy leg.’

Burns could imagine them sitting in the Department of Social Security waiting for the crowd of applicants to thin out.

‘So while you sat and waited, you chatted?’

‘Yeah, a bit.’

‘But you never asked his surname?’

‘No, and ’e never asked me mine, did ’e?’

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