Peter smiled agreement and held on to his seat. If he ever again got a motor, it would be a medium-sized white van. They ruled the road. Everyone else got out of the way of the white van.
‘What if someone comes in and asks for the key to someone else’s storage unit?’
‘If they haven’t got the number, and we don’t recognise them, they’re out of there. No way. Legal letters proving ownership, maybe. That’s why we keep the keys.’
‘Security?’
‘Video, outside and inside in every corner of the place, except the interiors of the units. Most people bring stuff in themselves, self-storage, see? But it can be done by removers and we can send it on. You can see everything from the office where we keep the keys. John or me’s on duty every day from eight until eight, except Saturdays. We lock up and leave it for the night. Not much of a robbery risk, really. Place is like a warren of a fortress, and why rob a place unless you know what’s in it? It’s nice that you’re interested, Peter. Can’t usually get anyone interested in a business like this. Hen was the only one who ever was, she worked here. Said we had to have a special unit for clothes, so we do. Do you have intentions towards my daughter?’
‘I don’t know yet. Only honourable ones.’
Mr Joyce gave a bark of laughter.
‘Well, that’s honest, at least. If you mess her about, I’ll not make the same mistakes as I did with Angel, I’ll just come along and punch your lights out. Wish I’d done it to him. I would, now.’
They had driven two miles into countryside Peter failed to notice, past roundabouts and out-of-town supermarkets, down a hill into the vicinity of Mr Joyce’s empire. A sprawled building of dull ugliness, two storeys high in parts, the dimensions difficult to detect, an anonymous blot on the landscape, a red-bricked and metal-windowed eyesore, looking like the disused military hospital it once was, the sight of it depressing him and cheering Mr Joyce mightily. It was his, after all. There were large metal containers, each the size of a small bathroom and each with its own, padlocked door, lined up in rows next to where he parked the van in front of the building. These containers looked like portable lavatory cabins, arranged into a set of miniature streets.
‘Chinese containers,’ Mr Joyce said, proudly. ‘They export so much stuff in these, and we never send anything back. Very solid and cheap to buy. Would one of them do?’
‘No. Somewhere inside.’
Despite the front office, with heater and counter and seats and clipboards and video screens, a place where Mr Joyce was obviously at home, Peter bristled in the atmosphere of the place. There were notices, NO GUNS, AMMUNITION, WEAPONS, FOODSTUFFS, ACCEPTED FOR STORAGE. His criminally orientated mind thought only of what other contraband could be stored here, such as laundered money, drugs and burglary proceeds, things hidden to be kept from recognition by anyone else. A man came into the office, sheepishly requesting his key so that he could search among his stored possessions for a missing passport he had left in a drawer, and innocence prevailed again. Now, where shall we put this? On to a trolley for passage from here to there, number, ready for Peter to push easily but clumsily to a new home. Row D, but they don’t go in order, we’ve expanded since we started; that was once F, and the one leading off is Z, it’s all on the cork board. Pins in different colours, all with numbers, bit of a puzzle, unless you know where you are. Used to be an isolation unit, I think, lots and lots of separate rooms and do you think this needs a de luxe suite? Cost per square foot.
‘I don’t suppose anyone else can know the inside of this place like you do?’
‘I do, John does, Hen, too, I suppose, she used to play here. Is this big enough? Nothing will perish in there.’
It was cold, cold, cold, walls of painted brick and concrete floors. Dozens of metal cells of various sizes, reached by neon-lit, glaringly white corridors punctuated by heavy swing doors, reminiscent of the old institution it was and full of the spectres of human luggage on stretchers. Peter had the urge to uncoil a piece of string after himself, so that he could feel his way back. It reminded him of a vast and empty school after everyone had gone home shrieking with the glee of the newly escaped, with distinct overtones of a prison, a place of a thousand locks and keys. They passed a separate room housing an archive, a room for spare parts of washing machines, smaller rooms for personal items, all guaranteed free of damp, mice and other vermin; if such destructive creatures, or anything live lurked inside the metal sheds, they would be able to escape. The further they penetrated into the bowels of the building, the colder it grew, or perhaps that was his imagination and the depressing realisation that he would have to come back here one day soon and find it all over again. With Hen.
The selected space was at the furthest end of the complex, reached long after he was lost following Mr Joyce who strode ahead, talking over his shoulder and mistaking Peter’s silent curiosity for genuine interest in something more than the way out. That one’s full of books; that one’s stock for a little mail order business; that one, I don’t know. Gets full, after Christmas. They reached a metal container in a room big enough to house five trunks let alone the one. The trunk was unloaded, convenient handles on either side. There were hooks for the garment bags left hanging against the walls forlornly. Even the trunk looked lonely, as if pressed into service after a long time and then abandoned again. The metal door was closed, the padlock secured and the key pocketed. Peter felt he was walking away from the depositing of a coffin containing a body that was only preserved for a post-mortem. It was chilly enough for a mortuary.
Abandoned goods, packed with care, looking forlorn and undignified as if saying we were intended for better things and finer settings than this: we require a room with a view. Shutting the door on them seeming like cruelty. Like everything in this place, it might be mainly rubbish, but it was rubbish with attitude and meaning.
Mr Joyce drove Peter back to the station where they shook hands, firmly, even warmly. The seat on the train seemed sumptuously warm, with the peculiar privacy of public transport. He was full of sad anger, looked at the number on the key he had insisted on keeping and felt his wallet lighter by a hundred pounds. Who was he to tell that he might have deposited the cream of Marianne Shearer’s wardrobe into anonymity, where it could stay safe and undisturbed, as long as he paid? The stuff in the trunk must have been hers. The trunk was the vintage of trunk she might have borrowed and carried with her from New Zealand when she came here to study and make her fortune. It looked old enough, with the old labels bearing her name still affixed over even older labels, and all so blurred it came from another lifetime. Why had she ordered these things to be delivered to the Misses Joyce? When had the Lover followed her instructions? Who to tell, who to tell?
To whom could he tell his own, monstrous theory of a shameless woman who died of shame?
Come back, he said and tell me. Tell me what you thought. No answer.
Transcript, transcript. She talked about the transcript in the note she left for the Lover. She must mean the transcript of the Rick Boyd trial, and in all Peter’s own reading of his own copy, rationing it, never wanting to dwell on it, there was something he missed. Something in a copy. Tell who? Tell Henrietta Joyce about her bequest, and Thomas Noble about the possible existence of documents at the bottom of that trunk? No, not until he knew why. A good lawyer only served one master at once, conflicts of interest to be avoided at all costs. Unfashionable notion though it was, Peter knew the first master was conscience and the second the client who paid you. He wanted to see Hen, but he would see Thomas Noble first.