Just saying that brought all the fear and misery right back. I stared hard at the off-white walls, trying to make a pattern out of the grimy handprints, black rubber skidmarks and chips from weights swung too enthusiastically. Dennis slowed to a halt and walked across to the shelves of thin towels that the management think are all we deserve. Like I said, it’s cheap. I suppose it was their version of crime prevention; nobody in their right mind would steal those towels. Dennis picked up a couple, draped them over his big shoulders and sat down on the bench facing me. ‘D’you want to talk about it?’
I sighed. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I can.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Dennis. Quite the opposite. I trusted his affection for me almost too much to tell him what had happened to Richard. There was no knowing what limits Dennis would go to in the attempt to take care of anyone threatening my happiness and wellbeing. Considering the different perspective we have on the law of the land, we find ourselves side by side facing in the same direction more often than not. For some reason that neither of us quite understands, we know we can rely on each other. And just as important, we like each other too.
Dennis patted my left ankle, the only part of me he could comfortably reach. ‘You decide you want an ear, you let your Uncle Dennis know. What d’you need right now?’
‘I’m not sure about that either.’ I wiped the back of my hand over my mouth and upper lip and tasted the sharp salty sweat. ‘Dennis. Why would you put trade plates on a stolen motor rather than false plates?’
‘What kind of stolen motor? Joyrider material, stolen to order, or just somebody stuck for a ride home?’
‘A brand new Leo Gemini turbo super coupé. Less than a ton on the clock.’
He pondered for a moment. ‘Temporary measure? To keep the busies off my back till I got it delivered where it was supposed to be going?’
‘In this instance, we’re talking a couple of days after the car was lifted. Plenty of time to have dropped it off with whoever, I’d have thought,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘In that case, you’re probably talking right proper villainy,’ he replied, rubbing the back of his neck with one of the towels.
‘Run it past me,’ I said.
Dennis pulled a packet of Bensons and a throwaway lighter out of the pocket of his sweat pants and lit up. ‘They never have any bloody ashtrays in here,’ he complained, looking round. The paradox clearly escaped him. ‘Anyway, your professional car thief goes out on the job knowing exactly what motor he’s going for. He doesn’t do things on spec. He’d have a set of plates on him that he’d already matched up with another car of the same make and model, so that if some smart-arsed traffic cop put him through the computer he’d come up clean. So he wouldn’t need trade plates. Your serious amateurs, they might use trade plates just to get it across town to their dealer. But they’re not that easy to come by. OK so far?’
I got off the floor and squatted on a low bench. ‘Clear as that Edinburgh crystal you offered me last month,’ I said.
‘Your loss, Kate,’ he said. ‘Now, on the other hand, if I wanted a fast car for a one-off job, I’d do exactly what the guy you’re interested in has done. I’d nick a serious set of wheels, smack some trade plates on it from my local friendly hooky garage when I was actually using it, then dump it as soon as I’d finished the job.’
‘When you say proper villainy, what exactly did you have in mind?’ I asked.
‘The kind of stuff I don’t do. Major armed robbery, mainly. A hit, maybe.’
I began to wish I had the sense not to ask questions I wasn’t going to like the answers to. ‘What about drugs?’
He shrugged. ‘Not the first thing that would spring to mind. But then, I don’t hang out with scum like that, do I? At a guess, it’d only be worth doing if you were shifting a parcel of drugs a reasonable distance between two major players. Say, from London to Manchester. Otherwise there’d be so many cars running around with trade plates that even the coppers would notice. Also, trade plates are ten a penny on the motorway. Whereas brand new motors with or without trade plates stick out like a sore thumb on the council estates where most of the drugs get shifted. You want to get a pull these days, you just have to park up in Moss Side in anything that isn’t old enough to need an MOT,’ he added bitterly.
‘What would you say if I told you there were a couple of kilos of crack in the boot of this car?’
Dennis got to his feet. ‘Nice chatting to you, Kate. Be seeing you. That’s what I’d say.’
I pulled a face and stood up too. ‘Thanks, Dennis.’
Dennis put a warm hand on my wrist and gripped it tightly enough for me not to think about pulling away. ‘I’ve never been more serious, Kate. Steer clear of them toerags. They’d eat me for breakfast. They wouldn’t even notice you as they swallowed. Give this one the Spanish Archer.’
‘The Spanish Archer?’ This was a new one on me.
‘El Bow.’
I smiled. ‘I’ll be careful. I promise.’ I thought I’d grown out of promising what I can’t deliver. Obviously I was wrong.
Chapter 6
I walked into the office to find my partner Bill looming over Shelley like a scene from The Jungle Book. Bill is big, blond and shaggy, the antithesis of Shelley, petite, black and immaculately groomed right down to the tips of her perfectly plaited hair. He looked up and stopped speaking in midsentence, finger pointing at something on Shelley’s screen.
‘Kate, Kate, Kate,’ he boomed, moving across the room to envelop me in the kind of hug that makes me feel like a little girl. Usually I fight my way out, but this morning it was good to feel safe for a moment, even if it was only an illusion. With one hand, Bill patted my back, with the other he rumpled my hair. Eventually, he released me. ‘Shelley filled me in. I was just going to phone you,’ he said, walking over to the coffee machine and busying himself making me a cappuccino. ‘This business with Richard. What do you want me to do?’
On paper, Bill might be the senior partner of Mortensen and Brannigan. In practice, when either of us is involved in a major case and needs help from the other, there’s never any question of the gopher role going to me just because I’m the junior. Whoever started the ball rolling stays the boss. And in this instance, since it was my lover who was in the shit, it was my case.
I took the frothy coffee he handed me and slumped into one of the clients’ chairs. ‘I don’t know what you can do,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to find out who stole the car, who the drugs belong to and to make out a strong enough case against them for the police to realize they’ve made a cock-up. Otherwise Richard stays in the nick and we sit back and wait for the slaughter of the innocents.’
Bill sat down opposite me. ‘Shelley,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘stick the answering machine on, grab yourself an espresso and come and give us the benefit of your thoughts. We need every brain we’ve got working on this one.’
Shelley didn’t need telling twice. She sat down, the inevitable notepad on her knee. Bill leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘First question. Accident or intent?’
‘Accident,’ I said instantly.
‘Why are you so sure?’ Bill asked.
I took a sip of coffee while I worked out the reasons I’d been so certain. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘First, there are too many imponderables for it to be intentional. If someone was deliberately trying to set up Richard, or me, they wouldn’t have bothered with the trade plates. They’d just have left it sitting there with its own plates, so obvious that he couldn’t have missed it. Why bother with all of that when they could have planted the drugs in either of our cars at any time?’