Jogging Memories Ch. 04

"What a mess, Jen."

"Yes it is."

CHAPTER SIX: Meeting Mum

It was early on Monday morning when Ralph and Mike Haroldson called round to the sheltered accommodation flat where Ann Barlow lived. She was already dressed, with her coat on, and the flat door wide open, waiting for them.

They chattered throughout the forty-five minute journey, fighting their way through the rush hour traffic between Nottingham and Chesterfield. They mostly talked about what Tommy was like, firstly as a teenager and then as a young adult.

The Haroldsons learned that Tommy was an only child, who had been a bit of a tearaway at school. The main calming influence in his life was Sally Chapman, who was from the outset his childhood playmate, best friend and eventually lover and soul mate. She made him knuckle down at school, study hard and pass his exams. She had helped him win his engineering apprenticeship and keep it. They married less than a year prior to his disappearance. Ann simply couldn't believe Tommy had any reason for wanting to vanish into thin air. It wasn't the pressures of parenthood. Sally didn't even know she was pregnant herself until a week after he failed to come back, after going down to the corner shop for a bottle of milk.

"Did he walk down to the shop?" asked Mike, from the driver's seat, to Ann sitting in the front next to him.

"Yes, Mike, they couldn't afford a car. Newlyweds they were, they could barely afford that tiny flat they rented," Ann then chuckled, "Young love, they just had to get married early, to be together even through they hadn't a brass penny between them to rub together."

"What happened to Sally after Tommy failed to come back, Ann?" Ralph asked from the back seat.

Ann twisted a little in her seat to see him face to face, "She moved to Australia in 1986, and remarried, took my grandson Brett with them. Sally didn't have much in the way of family over here to visit. They've not been back since, not even for a holiday."

"How did you feel about that, Ann?" Mike asked.

"I will admit I was very sorry to see little Brett go, Alan was, too. He was all the family we had left. Brett was only three and a bit at the time and we had got quite attached. He was such a cheerful, lovely little boy. I used to look after him because, being on her own, Sally had to go out to work. She couldn't afford the rent on the flat on her own and we couldn't help her out much financially. Alan had to retire early through ill-health. So very soon she moved back in with her dad and step-mum, neither of who she got on with." She straightened up in the car seat and stretched out her legs.

"Sally was so good with Brett, though," she continued speaking to no one in particular, "She worked hard and lived just to get home to see him. She looked after him so well. She bought second-hand clothes for him, altering and repairing them all herself. Sally was an excellent seamstress. Sally's the daughter we never had, she was so lovely. Then she met this nice chap called George, who was prepared to take her on even with Brett in tow. Not many men would do that. He was quite a bit older than Sally and already had a house that he had inherited from his parents. Eventually they moved in together."

"What took her to Australia?" Mike asked.

"It was being in and around Nottingham all the time. Sally had known Tommy ever since she could remember living in the town. Everything she saw reminded her of him, the park, the picture house, even the buses and roads she walked or travelled down. She refused to marry George at first, thinking Tommy could come back to her any day. She told me privately that she would go back to Tommy in an instant. She would forgive him for whatever reason he gave for leaving. But eventually she gave up looking and waiting for him. She needed a new life for Brett's sake, and that it had to be a long way away from Nottingham, I could understand that. Anyway, George applied for a job out there in Melbourne, so they upped sticks and went away in 1986."

"That must've been hard on you, with Tommy your only boy lost to you and Brett, your only grandchild, moving to the other side of the world, wasn't it?" Mike asked.

"Aye, it was. I get regular cards and letters from them though, on birthdays and Christmas. Sally always posts me a lovely card for Mother's Day, she's always been such a sweetheart. She sends me lots of photos." She patted the bag on her lap, "I've brought a whole bunch of them to show Tommy when we get there."

<<<>>>

Rachel had been rushing around this Monday morning, she had a lot of things to do and "Hermann" was really starting to get on her case. Firstly, the Inspector had grabbed her as soon as she had come in, even before her first hot sweet black coffee of the day, and quizzed her about this string of burglaries that she had barely made any progress on at all. Rachel fobbed him off with the news that the two laptops in the boot of the recovered car were not the Cottons'. Told him she had called back to the station where the car was being kept to see if a computer expert could be found who could get into the laptops and check out the files. They said they would get back to her. If they haven't sorted something out in a couple of days she'd have to fill in the blasted forms so she could collect the computers herself.

Secondly, and this was where Rachel was most concerned, "Hermann" had picked up from somewhere that the John Doe case at the Royal Hospital was getting more and more interesting by the minute. Apparently a couple of guys from the Nottingham Division were on their way to the Hospital to see this Tommy Barlow, with his Mum in tow, and had called their intentions into "Hermann" in advance by way of courtesy.

Damn! Now Goring was insisting on regular updates from Rachel. She knew that once this case got to where she thought it was heading, that she would be pushed out of the way and "Hermann" would take over. Damn Goring, he was such a bloody glory hunter!

First thing to do, she thought, was to get down to that hospital again and charm her way into that interview between Tommy and whoever the Nottingham law were. Hopefully, she thought, they'd be the same level as her, maybe with a sergeant in charge. She might have to use a bit of charm and fluttered eyelids to get up to speed with what info they had that wasn't in the very sparse old missing person file. She left her untouched coffee to grow cold.

She got to the Royal first, which was a blessed relief to her. Tommy was all alone, sitting in the chair next to his bed, and smiled broadly when he saw her. Rachel noticed that the artificial lighting was almost up to normal in his room.

"How are your eyes this morning, Tommy?" she asked brightly after the initial pleasantries had been exchanged.

"Almost brilliant," he laughed, "If only my eyes didn't feel as gritty and bloody as Dracula's and looked less like a panda's I'd be one hundred percent."

"You are really looking good, Tommy. I remember the first time I saw you. Well, you looked half dead; eyes covered up, nose and mouth connected up to the air supply, all sorts of blood, plasma and liquid drips going into you, as well as being connected up to the National Grid, with more dials and flashing lights than a jumbo jet."

"Like Frankenstein, was I?" Tommy chuckled.

She smiled at him. "Yeah. Pretty much. At that point the medical opinion seemed to be that they weren't confident you'd actually make it. Glad to see they underestimated the fight you had left in you."

"Yeah, Doc Harding was in earlier, poking and prodding me, as usual. He's not the gentlest of quacks, but Ben tells me he's pretty sound. That's good enough for me. Says he's pleased with my progress for an old timer - which is a bloody cheek, sorry about my language, considering he's old enough to be, well my older, less handsome brother, at any rate."

Rachel laughed, "You sound like you are really on the mend now, if you can joke about how you feel!"

"Yeah, it's laugh a minute in this place. It still bloody hurts my chest when I laugh, though, and you're not helping me much, Rach! The Doc says I can go home almost any day and in a week's time or so he reckons I can take up a bit of light running again, if I feel like it. I am going to feel weak for a while."

"Do you remember going out running on that Sunday, yet?"

"No, I don't remember running at all, ever. Not since school anyway, maybe a quick kick around with a plastic football during lunchtimes in the yard behind the factory. Never done any dedicated running that I am aware of. Doc says though that I'm honed and trained like a whippet, with superb muscle conditioning he says."

Rachel smiled at his cheeky raised eyebrows..

"Those are his words, not mine," Tommy grinned, "I feel just about as strong as a spring lamb, if I'm honest. He's worked out that I must run regularly five miles or so at a time on very much a daily basis. In fact, he reckons on Sunday, from my home in Buxton, I must have run anything from 25 to 30 miles, even assuming I had gone in a reasonably straight line. I may even have been wandering around for hours with no water and this gash on my arm was leaking blood all the time. They could tell that from the blood patterning on my shirt, shorts, even socks and running shoes. No wonder I was so completely out of it."

"So you've accepted you are this ..." Rachel consulted her notes again, although more by ingrained habit than anything else, she now knew the answer off by heart, "Robert Morris?"

"Yeah, I guess so, no alternative, really," Tommy pondered, "Bloody confusing though, ain't it, being two people an'all? Then Ben tells me when I was half awake and still dreaming when he came on shift first thing this morning, that I was mumbling away to myself in German."

"German?"

"Yeah, Ben said they had a German doctor here as a locum last year who could barely speak English and I sounded just like him."

"And you don't remember it?"

"No." Tommy replied, "I remember odd snatches of dreams, most of it confusing, but not that. Perhaps I used to watch Continental art films?"

"Well, Tommy, for now, you are certainly keeping me in an interesting job."

"Well, Rach," he smiled, "You're a bit more than just an investigator, you know. Along with Ben, Helen and Sharon, you are just about the only mates I have."

"Are you flirting with me, Tommy Barlow?"

"Well, you are very pretty, Rach. But no, not really, it's almost impossible to believe that in a matter of a few days I've gone from being a happy-go-lucky 23-year-old with everything to live for into someone old enough to be, pretty well, old enough to be your father for a start. Quite honestly, I'd be mad to flirt with anyone, with two families already under my belt so to speak, both of which seem to have conveniently forgotten all about little old me. So I don't what that says about my ability to maintain relationships."

"Well, you can't be as bad as some we come across."

"Maybe, but at the same time all the while this mystery is going on I still feel as though I am a young man with all my life still ahead of me. But it seems," he continued more reflectively, "That in reality I am rapidly heading towards the end of my working life and I have no idea what I have managed to achieve, if anything at all, or where I am heading. I feel like that character Adam Adamant that was on the telly quite a few years ago, now."

"Yes? I've never heard of him."

"He was some Victorian detective, like Sherlock Holmes, who was brought back from the dead against his will and found himself out of the time he was most comfortable in. I was only about nine when I saw the show myself, but my Dad loved it and used to talk about it all the time and point out the stars whenever they appeared in anything else. There have been so many changes for me, if I can't learn and pretty quickly, how am I going to go back to work and earn a decent living?"

"When you put it like that, I can see how awkward it is."

"Tell me about it," he sighed, "To help me catch up, Ben has loaned me his eyeball-phone." He held it up to her.

"iPhone," she giggled, "What has he been showing you? Some on-line porn, I bet!"

"What?"

"Oh, maybe it's too early and he hasn't shown you that yet," she laughed, "You are still a complete innocent, then."

"You should know that I'm innocent until proven guilty, Detective, only then will it be a fair cop!"

<<<>>>

"Assembly shop, Amos Joseph speaking," Amos barked loudly into the phone, to overcome the deafening noise from the assembly line thundering through his open office door.

"Hello, Mr Joseph," came the tiny voice at the other end of the line, "I'm JJ Morris, Bob Morris's daughter? I think we last met at the company picnic back in the summer?"

"Yes, of course," Amos replied, stretching over his desk and pushing the door to with his fingertips, cutting out the pneumatic clamour from the assembly line, reducing the ambient noise levels by half. Amos couldn't help smiling at the picture forming from his memory banks of the tiny dark-haired tomboy girl bossing the boys around at an impromptu cricket match at that glorious picnic, "What can I do for you, JJ?"

"First of all I wanted to thank you for looking after Dad when he got injured-"

"It was the least-"

"It was very much appreciated, Mr Joseph. Listen, Dad has not wanted to talk to us about what happened. You know how quiet he has been lately. Probably Dad doesn't want to bother us with the details or have us worry unnecessarily about his safety at work."

"Oh, right," Amos said hesitatingly, finding himself on unfamiliar territory, the way the conversation was heading. She was Bob's daughter after all, and therefore entitled to know. She wasn't one of those awful ambulance-chasing lawyers after damages, nor was Bob for that matter. At least he didn't think so. What harm could it do the company, simply to reassure the little girl?

"It was a nasty gash, JJ, I'll admit that, but it's not the normal risk that your Dad faces on the assembly line," he started, "It looks like the guys on the previous operation had pinched one of the cables in the joint and your Dad tried to put it right by undoing the nuts that held it in place. Unfortunately, he didn't have the right size on the pneumatic driver, so he used an adjustable monkey wrench on it and he slipped. Normally, he should have been alright, JJ, but the previous guys had put the assembly part in upside down and left a sharp edge instead of the usual folded edge on the end and your Dad sliced his arm open. Nasty it was, I must admit. Must've been painful. Anyway, the on-duty nurse made a really nice job of cleaning out the wound and sewing him up. Neatest job I ever saw, if I was honest. I expect his arm is still a bit sore though. Now, JJ, you make sure you tell your Dad not to come into work until he is absolutely 100 per cent good and ready. You hear me JJ?"

"I hear you Mr Joseph," the little voice came back, "Oh, was it you that dropped him off at home?"

"Yeah, that's right. You know your Dad," Amos shook his head at recalling Bob's reaction immediately after treatment, "He was only going to go back into the line for the last hour or so of the shift. I put a stop to that idea straight away, JJ, and I certainly wasn't going to let him jog all the way home as he usually does. No, I dropped him off at the alleyway entrance behind your house, in the street over the back of you. Your Dad said he'd get in the back way rather than wake up your Mum that early in the morning, Sunday morning." Amos had a final thought, "Hey, how did you kids get on at weekend camp by the way? That's all Bob went on about all week, I guess he would've liked to have gone with you, if he hadn't already used up his holiday, right?"

"Yeah, we missed him but we had a great time at camp, even the weather was kind to us, Mr Joseph, considering the time of year. The Yorkshire moors are fantastic. Must go now, Mr Joseph, I am just walking up to the school entrance now. Thank you for your reassurance about Dad. Bye Mr Joseph."

"Yeah, bye JJ, you take care now." Amos put the phone back on the rest.

Nice girl that JJ, really nice girl, cute too, he thought, Bob is rightly proud of her.

<<<>>>

"Mum? Oh Jesus! Mum, it's really you!"

"Tommy, Tommy, son," Ann Barlow's eyes were full of tears as she reached out for her long lost child. To everyone else he was now an old man, but for her all those years in between fell away. They embraced, Mother and Son, her silver-haired head buried in his chest, her arms squeezed around him.

"Careful, Mum," he winced, "My ribs are still a bit sore, you know."

"So sorry, Tommy," she apologised as she released her grip, "Thoughtless of me."

"Come here," Tommy squeezed her again, even harder than before, "And I'm only kiddin' Mum, I'm almost on the mend."

"You kidder," she tapped him playfully on the shoulder, "You haven't changed one little bit, Tommy Barlow, you, you scamp!"

"I feel like I have changed a hell of a lot, Mum," he muttered, "Just a glance in the mirror is enough evidence of the passing of time since I last saw you."

She broke off their embrace and looked him up and down. It was difficult to see him that clearly, her eyes were dull and filmy with wet emotion. Tommy was wearing faded pyjamas a size too big for him, his right arm heavily bandaged, she had felt the tight bandaging around his middle, too, no doubt for the rib injuries he had received. And as for his poor face...

"Your poor face, Tommy," she scolded, getting back into her mother routine, after so many years it was still automatic. "Tell me what you have been up to, to get yourself like this?"

Tommy laughed, "I think you will have to ask Detective Rachel here, she knows more than I do about it, to be honest, I only remember waking up here in this bed three or four days ago. Everything else is a complete blank. The last thing I can recall is 32 years ago when I went up the shops for a bottle of milk."

"You poor boy," Ann said quietly, gently stroking his bruised cheek, as Tommy turned his attention to Rachel.

Rachel cleared her throat. While son and mother were reacquainting themselves with each other, Rachel had quietly introduced herself to Chief Inspector Michael Haroldson who, in the friendliest of fashion asked to be called Mike as he was here almost in a private capacity. In turn he had introduced his father Ralph as not only one of the investigating detectives from the original case but also a family friend of Mrs Barlow. Mike made it crystal clear from the outset that this was Rachel's current ongoing case, he wasn't there to pull rank but simply to close a case and clear up an old mystery, both officially and unofficially.

Phew, though Rachel, Mike was a breath of fresh air compared to stuffy "Hermann". She noted he was quite handsome as well as being a smart senior officer. A bit overweight, true, but he had a nice smile. Clearly, he was a gentleman to boot. His father Ralph reached over and shook her hand with a matching welcoming smile on his face, too.

With all the attention on her, Rachel smiled at her audience and spoke. She didn't need her notebook to begin with, but had it comfortingly to hand in case she needed to refer to it later.

"Well, Mrs Barlow, Tommy here was found in an open clearing just off the beaten track within Birkinshaw Woods, a beauty spot a few miles west-north-west of Chesterfield, at 12.43 on Sunday morning, the 27th of October. A Miss Helen Bister, who is 26, while jogging through the forest, found him. At first she was suspicious of what she appeared to be faced with, but she approached and saw Tommy unconscious on the ground. She thought he was dead-"

Ann gasped at this disclosure. Tommy held her hand and guided her to a chair to sit down and he sat next to her, putting his arm around her. Rachel paused in her summary at this point until Tommy and his mother were composed.