Search Engines – Bentley 26

 

[For back story go here: Story so far at 17 Sept 2020 and more recent episodes including this one.]

[Relevant back story also in embedded links.]

The contents of the drawer of memories was all over the floor. There was nothing which immediately caught Bentley’s eye although Covid was gently sniffing round a few things. Maybe the cat had a better idea of where to start than he did. Or maybe it was all just a question of luck anyway. 

Lawrence had taken the ring. At least Bentley was 99 per cent certain of that so there was still the chance that he hadn’t. So option one was to get in touch with Lawrence, or wait for him to get in touch, and have it out.

But. But there was another route. Firstly Lawrence might not have taken it, in which case Bentley needed to track it down. It wasn’t in his flat, of that much he was sure, and there was no way Shiela would have it and still bear the kind of grudge over it which she did.

So what Bentley was looking for now was a location, a clue, something, anything that would give him a hint of a place where the ring might have ended up. Either because that’s where Lawrence would have taken it or because at some point in the break up of his family the ring fell between the cracks, between locations. 

Bentley felt out of touch with the world of his younger self, the point when he was in love, did rash things and had an enjoyable family life. Wherever the ring was, it would be in that world and so it was into that world that Bentley now needed to propel himself.

From the start there was memorabilia he could easily dismiss. He’d chased down the relevant receipt and there was a whole cavalcade of tickets which, while reminding him of adventures, ideas and occasions, didn’t hit the right date or scenario he was looking for. Despite this, Bentley already felt himself becoming fifteen to twenty years younger, realising again the things that were important to him then and how all these relics of his former life pieced together. Alarmingly, he realised how quickly things had disintegrated or been allowed to slip over that time. He could practically taste the security and sense of place that had been there before.

He found postcards. These could be of more interest he thought, again casting out those whose date – recorded either through the postmark or through Bentley’s own memory – did not tally with the time he needed to consider. Among those which remained were a string of postcards from Lawrence.

Bentley’s version of events saw Lawrence having a huge falling out with his parents before leaving the family home. At that point, Bentley was pretty certain, the ring disappeared although it wasn’t noticed until some time later – maybe eight months to a year when the tension between he and Shiela became too unbearable for it not to result in a massive argument. The argument ranged from their personal habits to Lawrence’s departure and culminated in the revelation that the ring had gone. Sheila accused Bentley of selling it for the money. It had not gone well.

The postcards came after that row. Lawrence journeyed around the UK in an almost haphazard fashion, although it was clear he was heading north in the first instance, reaching Glasgow, going across to Edinburgh and then beginning to come back down the East coast to disappear somewhere around Hull. The cards didn’t tell Bentley why he traveled there, but at least they knew he was alive. Initially they just said hello from their location, but after while there were more cryptic phrases. After Hull, however, Bentley heard nothing of him until a friend of a friend claimed to have seen him in Brighton a few years later. 

Bentley’s own career had seen him work across the length and breadth of the UK’s railway network and as he thought about it, he realised that around the time of Lawrence’s final card from Hull he was actually based in York. Sifting through the raw material in front of him, Bentley found details and leaflets from the National Railway Museum from around the same time.

There was something here – or there – Bentley felt sure that demanded more investigation. He’d visited the museum partly as a punter but mainly as an insider, and he knew a few people who ran the museum and who worked on the nearby station. He knew that in another drawer he’d find an old photograph album stuffed full of photos from the museum, photos that would again open more doors into his past. Open the doors, thought Bentley, get on a train and search.

He busied himself with the next stage of his research programme, namely the contents of the museum at that time, who and where he visited and the phrases Lawrence had penned on the postcards. Put these together, thought Bentley, and there must be some kind of answer. 

But even as he did this a more persistent question bothered his thinking. If this was really all about the ring, why had it taken Aston and his cronies so long to come at him to try and get the thing back?