“No problem. Good luck, and let me know what you find.”
“Thanks, Bob, you’ll be the first to know. Meanwhile, I’ve another job for you. Put it all down in writing, particularly this conversation. Make it read as if we have a hypothesis, and all we have to do to prove it is examine the bonnet of that MG. That’s what our entire case revolves around.”
Five minutes with the map can save you fifty on the road. I just made that up. It needs working on, but it’s true. Head for the M1, A57 at J31 and then the A1 down into Newark. Smith Brothers were on a trading estate on the south side, as you left town, I was told. I memorised the route and set off.
I reached my destination half an hour earlier than expected thanks to clear roads and a reckless disregard of speed limits, but I was still overtaken by a procession of expensive cars on the motorway, heading for the next appointment. They can’t all have believed that they’d be able to sweet-talk the traffic cops because they were on their way to nail a murderer, but they drove as if they did.
I lost the half-hour looking for the yard. It was well outside town, at an old World War II bomber station, and the business was based on the storage capacity of three huge hangars. There were wrecked cars everywhere: piled in heaps outside; stacked neatly on pallets inside. Multicoloured conglomerates of twisted metal, chrome and glass; each one, I thought, bringing misery to someone. About ten people a day are killed on our roads, dotted about the country like a mild case of chicken pox, but this was where the evidence came together in one great sore. Some were hardly damaged, awaiting the assessor’s go-ahead to repair; others — many of them — were unrecognisable, and you knew that people had died in there. Once these hangars had housed the bringers of carnage, now they housed the results. A corner was reserved for bent police cars, gaudy in their paintwork but strangely silent, like crippled clowns. Wandering down the first aisle, between the neatly shelved wrecks, I saw abstract images, paintings and photographs, everywhere I looked. I tore myself away and knocked at the office door.
A uniformed PC was inside, drinking tea with a man in a blue shirt and rainbow tie. A woman in a short skirt with a ladder in her tights, a small-town siren, was typing in the corner. “DI Priest,” I announced to all present, “Heckley CID. Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
The PC stared at me, open mouthed, and the man in the shirt coughed into his hand. “Lost your tongue?” I asked the PC.
“No, er, Sir,” he mumbled, reaching for his hat.
“Never mind that,” I said, turning to the other person and asking: “Mr Smith, is it?”
“Um, yes,” he replied uncomfortably.
“Good. I understand you have some records for an MGB that was brought into here back in 1982.” I told them the registration number and continued: “A colleague in Somerset has rung you, hasn’t he?”
The PC unwound himself from the chair and stood up. He was only about twenty-two, but even taller than me. “Could I, er, see your ID, Sir, if you don’t mind, please?”
“Sure.” I already had it in my hand. He took it from me, studied it carefully, then said: “Oh, heck.”
I pushed some papers to one side on a desk against the opposite wall and perched my backside on a corner of it, saying: “I think you’d better tell me all about it.” I folded my arms in the pose of a patient listener and waited, except my patience was rapidly evaporating.
“I’ve just arrived, Sir,” the PC stated, and introduced himself. “I came straight here when I received the message, but thought I must have missed you. Mr Smith had better explain.”
I turned to Mr Smith. When Bob had described him as the son of the proprietor I’d immediately formed an image of a young man barely out of college, but he was probably in his late forties. Another reminder of the passing years.
“Well,” he began. “I, er, received this telephone call, yesterday, I believe it was, from the police about the MG. Nothing new in that, it’s always happening, except usually it’s about something that came in recently, not twenty years ago. I said that we kept all the record cards and that we would probably have it somewhere if he gave me the dates.” He turned to the woman, who had stopped typing and was listening to our conversation. “Glynis here found it, didn’t you, duck?”
“Got black bright,” she complained. “It’s filthy in there, that far back.” She was wearing false eyelashes that a Buddhist monk could have raked the gravel with.
“And then what?” I asked.
“I was saving it,” Smith continued, “here in my drawer. He rang me again this morning. Twice, in fact. First time I told him we’d found the card, second time he said that you,” — he showed me the pad he kept alongside his telephone, with my name written on it — “would be calling to collect it. Then, about five minutes later, this man came in. Blimey, I thought, that was quick. Thought he’d said you’d be coming down from Yorkshire. This feller asked about the MG, gave me the number, and I said: ‘Are you DI Priest?’ and he said he was, so I gave him the card.”
“Can you describe him?” I asked.
“Well, he wasn’t very tall. Didn’t look like a cop, now you mention it. Dark hair, slim build, wore a leather raincoat.”
“I know him,” I said. “He’s a reporter.”
“A reporter!” Glynis exclaimed, clasping her hand to her mouth, as if I’d announced that the Son of Beelzebub had walked amongst them. I couldn’t imagine what she might have told him.
“Did you ask for a receipt for the card?” I asked.
“No, I’m sorry,” he replied.
“Or make a photocopy?”
“No, sorry. After all these years…”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about, Mr Smith,” I interrupted. “You were trying to be helpful and he took advantage. That’s how he earns his living. He definitely said he was me, did he?”
“Yes. I said: ‘Are you DI Priest?’ and he said: ‘Yes, that’s right,’ just like I told you.”
“Can you remember what it said on the card?”
“No, not really, except that I remember telling the other policeman, the one who rang, that Mr Burgess-Jones had bought the MG from the insurance company. He’s at Avecaster, on the Sleaford road, about fifteen minutes from here. Has a museum of vintage and classic cars. Used to buy a lot of stuff from us, but not so much these days.”
“OK,” I said, “here’s what I’d like you to do. Our young friend here,” — I gestured towards the PC — “will take a statement from you, putting in writing exactly what you’ve just told me, and anything else you remember. I’ll be grateful if you could do that for me.”
“Yes, glad to,” he agreed.
I stood up to leave. “And Glynis can make a contribution, if she has anything to add. Towards Sleaford, did you say?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s just off the A17,” the PC explained.
“Then that’s where I’m headed.”
It’s a different landscape to the one I live in: kinder to its inhabitants but two-dimensional and undemanding. Neat and fertile fields stretch away into the distance, outlined by lush trees, and in every direction a church steeple punctures the sky. Underneath the signpost pointing to Avecaster was one for Cranwell, home of the famous RAF college. I’d considered going there, once upon a time. The thought of roaring up and down the countryside in the latest fighter plane, silk scarf blowing in the wind, had a great appeal to me, but they changed the uniform and I lost interest. Avecaster was a typical Lincolnshire village: yellow stone houses; ivy-clad walls and an understated air of prosperity. Close-cropped verges fronted walled gardens. In the main street the houses crowded the road but on the outskirts they stood back from it: some quite modest; others with stable blocks jutting out to balance the triple garage at the other side. Mr Granville Burgess-Jones and his museum were at Avecaster Manor, probably known locally as the Big House. The gates were open so I drove in.
It was a respectable driveway, curving and lined with ornamental chestnut trees to hide the house until the last dramatic moment. A sign pointed left to the museum and car-park, with the information that it was only open at weekends and bank holidays. I went straight on, through an archway in a high wall, to where I could see several parked vehicles.