THE ARCHIVIST

‘I have some good news and some bad news,’ said Robert, my dearest friend for more than thirty years.
We grinned simultaneously, “good news, bad news” was a game we had been playing since our earliest days at university. One or other of us would come out with something like “the good news is we scored three goals today; the bad news is the other lot scored twelve”, or “the good news is I had a threesome with two women last night, the bad news is they were your sister and your mum.”
I waited anxiously for what he would say next. Something about his demeanour, as well as his voice when he had invited me for a drink in his London hotel room, warned me that this was more than the continuation of a well worn game.
‘The good news is that when the Commissioner retires next year, I’m to be his successor.’
‘What the devil’ I replied. ‘So that’s why you’re in London; you sly dog you.’
‘It’s not been announced yet, so keep it under your hat will you?’
‘ Of course I will,’ I assured him. ‘Congratulations, you deserve it. So go on, hit me; what’s the bad news?’
‘I’ll get to that later,’ he said mysteriously. ‘For now there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Go on,’ I replied, my anxiety at where this was leading cranking up a notch.
For a few moments he was silent, he merely sat and swilled his untouched brandy.
‘Have you ever heard of someone at the Yard called The Archivist?’
‘Can’t say that I have,’ I answered. ‘Is he something to do with the Black Museum?’
‘At first I thought so, but now I’m not so sure. I went to see the museum this morning, perk of the new job and all that, and while I was there this chap approached me.
‘ “Ah Mr Collins,” he said, though how he knew my name I really couldn’t say. “I am the Archivist. Do come with me please, I’ve something to show you.”
‘I said to him “I’ve already seen both rooms of the museum, can’t this wait for another time?”
‘ “It won’t take very long,” he insisted. “You’ve not seen the third room yet.”
‘Well Peter, that got my attention straightaway. According to everything I’ve ever seen or heard there are only two rooms.’
‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been but I have read about it.’
‘Anyway,’ continued Robert. ‘This Archivist chappie took me through a door I certainly hadn’t noticed before. It led to a huge store room, it looked much too big to be on the first floor of Scotland Yard.’
‘Like the TARDIS?’ I joked.
‘Very much so,’ he replied, quite seriously. ‘There were row upon row of shelves, each stacked with glass fronted boxes. In the one closest to me I could see a single very distinctive training shoe, in the next a broken baseball bat, beside that what I’m certain was the desiccated ear of a small child, while its neighbour contained the hard drive from a computer. Next door to that was a box containing a woman’s blood stained underwear. These boxes were everywhere, all containing these weird and wonderful things.’
‘Did you ask the, um, Archivist what they were?’ I asked.
‘Indeed I did. He told me they were the missing pieces of evidence that would solve every unsolved case we’d ever had. That we’d ever had!’
‘Why the fuck are they just sitting there?’ I interjected angrily. ‘I hope once you’re in charge you kick a few arses!’
A pained expression came suddenly to Robert’s face, changing rapidly to a look of wistful sadness. A silence followed that I was unwilling to break, partly through embarrassment at my little outburst.
‘I asked the Archivist much the same question, and expressed a similar threat. He told me, quietly and simply, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, the items were there because they were “still missing”. Still missing, I ask you, they were there in plain sight.’
Noticing that I was on the brink of another outburst, Robert waved his hand at me.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘Just let me tell you what the Archivist said. These items were the twins of actual items that the perpetrators of these unsolved crimes thought they had kept hidden from the police. Every time a criminal act was committed, the damming piece of evidence would show up in a box on the shelves in this room; it was his job, his mission if you will, to ensure that at least some of them would again see the light of day.
‘The training shoe belonged to a young boy knocked over and killed by the hit-and-run driver of a 4x4. Somehow it became wedged under the wheel arch; the driver had found it sometime later and disposed of it in a landfill. When the car is serviced tomorrow the mechanic will find the trainer…’
‘Wedged under the wheel arch?’ I interrupted.
‘ Exactly! The hard drive belonged to a very successful business man who had a penchant for pictures of young boys. He thinks it’s in the middle of the English Channel; he threw it overboard from a ferry. Tomorrow his eighteen year-old computer geek daughter will find it at the back of a drawer, recover what’s on it and show the photographs to her mother.
‘The ear was kept as a sick souvenir by some bastard who kidnapped a little girl forty-three years ago. A ransom was paid and the girl was released, minus two of her fingers and one of her ears. The fingers were sent to her parents as a bargaining tool, the ear was never recovered. He eventually buried it under the concrete floor of his basement, close by but safe; tomorrow builders renovating his house will find it under the bedroom floorboards. He’s eighty-one and he’s finally going to get caught.
‘Good!’ I said enthusiastically. You may have realised by now that I no longer questioned the preposterousness of the Archivist’s explanation, almost as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
‘The baseball bat,' Robert went on, ‘was used to close the mouth of a key witness in a trial. I’m not sure what exactly the Archivist is going to do with it but tomorrow a government minister we both know will be answering some very difficult questions.’
‘What about the woman’s underwear?’ I asked. ‘What foul miscreant is going to meet their comeuppance over those?’
‘That’s the bad news,’ Robert replied, his words hanging in the air like a death knell. ‘When I was a naïve young copper, an eighteen year old girl was murdered and dumped in a field near the street where I grew up. She was discovered naked but her jeans and t-shirt were found some time later in a hedge; it was me who found her underwear.’
‘Where?’ I asked, anxiety ramping up a further notch or two.
‘In a bag under my best friend’s bed,’ he answered.
‘You turned him in right?’ I asked, already fearing the answer.
‘No, I didn’t. He told me her death was an accident, rough sex gone bad. I believed him, I protected him. Over time we grew apart and I lost contact with him. Two days ago I received a letter from his brother, my former best mate died in a car crash last week.’
‘What did you do with the underwear?’ I queried, completely disregarding the recent demise of Robert's friend.
‘I burned it, I did a very thorough job.’ He stood up and crossed to a drawer beside the bed. ‘And yet, courtesy of the mysterious Archivist, here it is, exactly as it was when I first found it.’ He lifted the underwear from the drawer, looked at it for a moment then put it back, closing the drawer almost reverentially.
‘Oh Robert, I just don’t know what to say.’ I said uselessly.
‘I need to take a leak,’ he said.

That was the last time I saw my old friend alive. When he did not return from the toilet I went to look for him; I found him dead on the bathroom floor, the poison he’d swallowed was nothing if not efficient. Officially he died of a heart attack, and I was not going to be the one to say otherwise. As for the Archivist’s incriminating evidence, as I dialled 999 I opened the drawer Robert had so recently closed; it was empty. I fancy, justice of a sorts having been served, that the Archivist has returned it to its glass fronted box, hopefully for good this time.
Robert took his secret to the grave, as will I. This account is for you and you alone, my lovely wife, and if that means I am repeating his crime then so be it; most people wouldn’t believe me anyway. As for an additional storeroom in the Black Museum? There isn’t one.

COPYRIGHT D M PAMMENT 18th JANUARY 2010