“What’s up, Jack?” someone shouted at me.
Even as I punched in 999 for the police, the owners of the other dozen or so classic cars that had already arrived at the show were beginning to move in towards me, alerted by my yell of horror.
“Keep away,” I shouted back. “Crime scene.” And to make my point even clearer: “Murder.” That much was clear to me from those staring eyes, purple lips, and protruding tongue, even if the glimpse of a scarf taut around the neck hadn’t convinced me.
Only one of the onlookers refused to be daunted by my warning. Johnnie Darling, from Country Classic Car Events Ltd., who was organising this show, must have come rushing up from the main gates while I was feeding instructions over my mobile. He isn’t my favourite person, but he knows his stuff, so I told him to “Get back and stop any more cars coming in.”
“Right, Jack.” Johnnie promptly obeyed. He’d have to make hasty alternative arrangements for the other hundred or two classic cars on their merry way to what they thought would be a peaceful car show and a chat with fellow fans.
That left me to guard the scene, standing stock-still in order not to muddy it up with more footprints and so forth. The other owners stared at me as though I were the wizard in the midst of a pentagon while they kept their safe distance.
“Anyone see this Cord arrive?” I called out.
There were earnest consultations — undesirable — but apart from the fact that it hadn’t been the first or second to arrive, no one could be sure. Nor could they be sure who was driving it, since everyone seemed to agree that the ghastly paint on the car was what had transfixed them. One eagle-eyed owner was sure it was a man, though, and someone else thought he looked tallish and thinnish. Well, that probably ruled out Danny DeVito. The trouble is that there is no prescribed etiquette for such situations, particularly at car shows being held on the grounds of stately homes like this one, Broadmead Castle in Kent. What usually happens is that one arrives, gets out and admires one’s own car, beats its bounds to draw attention to it, and then proceeds, with a happy nod, to study one’s neighbours’. So with a dozen or so cars all arriving one after another in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes, there wasn’t much chance of consensus.
As I defended the crime scene, I began to feel like that Roman chap Horatius, who held the bridge over the Tiber against the Tuscan hordes. I failed with only one eager intruder. Despite another cry to keep away, Major Sir Peter Manning, whom I recognised as the owner of Broadmead Castle, informed me in no uncertain terms that crime scenes did not apply to him, and stalked straight over to me.
“This is my bloody car,” he yelled. “I’m sure of it. Look what they’ve done to it.”
He bent over to peer at the number plate, putting his hand out to support himself on the car.
“Crime scene,” I barked at him, catching hold of his arm before he could do so.
He straightened up and stared at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I know it is. Some maniac’s painted my car red.”
“There’s also a dead body inside.” I was beginning to dislike this man. He wasn’t even an old codger; probably in his late forties or early fifties, and with features as aquiline as Julius Caesar’s, he was clearly accustomed to rule. Not me, he wouldn’t.
He quietened down, though. “You mean they weren’t joking?” He waved his hand at the watching group of thwarted classic car owners.
“The police are on their way,” I said with gritted teeth. “That’s why I’m keeping this clear.”
“And who the hell might you be?”
“Jack Colby, Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations. I work with the police on car-crime cases.”
“You didn’t do much to get my car back when it was pinched two weeks ago. Look at it now. Flaming red. It was cream...”
I’d had enough of this. I spun him round and pointed at the rear seat. He took a quick look through the window and went very quiet.
“But it’s my car. Who is she?”
I thought he was going to be sick. I felt like it myself. I knew very well who she was. It was Bonnie.
“We pay you to find cars, not bodies,” Dave, or more formally Detective Chief Inspector David Jones, had grunted when I rang his hotline after my 999 call. The specialist crime unit of the Kent police is under his jurisdiction, and I was interested that he had come himself, even though there was a DI with him now hard at work organising the crime scene and SOCOs. The said DI, Denis Mulligan, was the senior investigating officer and every so often he threw me a penetrating look in my role of person who had discovered the body. Dave’s presence was not so much out of regard for my welfare as for the fact that this crime might be of particular interest to him.
Now that the action had been taken out of my hands, the shock was getting to me. I’d arrived early at the show, at about nine-fifteen, hence the small number of cars around when I had foolishly chosen to inspect the Cord. With the gates now firmly locked and the other cars rerouted to a neighbouring farm, Johnnie Darling came back to join me as a spectator.
We and the other car owners were in limbo now that the police were in charge; we were neither free to go nor able to contribute anything other than each his own story. The main refreshment tent had been commandeered by Mulligan as a temporary HQ, complete with tea and coffee conveniently set up in it, of course — and so the major and Johnnie had settled the rest of us in another tent which had originally been destined as the organisers’ preserve, which meant we were somewhat herded together.
Snatches of conversation — or rather exchange of comments, as there was no real communication between us — became repetitive: “Who is it?” “Seen that red, have you?” “Who’s this Bonnie?” “Nicked, of course.” “That paint job’s a crime.” Was the paint or Bonnie more important here? I wondered. Time to mourn the car once we were over the shock of her death.
I couldn’t take it any longer, and went outside again to find Dave, who was busy filling out forms on a picnic chair tucked between an Austin-Healey and a Delahaye. “Has she been identified yet?” I asked him. “It was Bonnie, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Looks like it. Her handbag was dumped on the floor. On our books as Eva Crowley, to be exact. Well and truly strangled with her own scarf.”
I thought of the lively attractive girl with the eyes that would dance no more. She had enlivened the majority of car shows, both locally in Kent and elsewhere. Bonnie, as she was known to aficionados, was a car show groupie. She had no apparent car of her own, but she loved classics. She loved their owners, too — the rich ones, anyway. Wherever I turned up, she’d give me a wave to indicate that we might be mates, but not to bother applying for her favours. Just as well. What I earn wouldn’t keep Bonnie in petrol perfume.
Why did we call her Bonnie? I’m not certain. She was bonny. She liked posing by car bonnets, and if she could charm the owners enough, on them, but the more likely reason was that she sometimes arrived at a show with a chap called Mick Clyde, which made her nickname Bonnie a natural one, like the two American gangsters. And now it seemed from what Dave was suggesting, Bonnie and Clyde might have been just that. Their relationship? Mick might have been her brother, for all I knew. Certainly he didn’t seem to object to her merrily making advances to any classic-car owner she fancied. Bonnie must have been in her late twenties; she was dark-haired, as slim and lithe as Raffles, and walked, with a swing, through life so happily that men jumped at the chance to walk at her side. Women seemed to like Bonnie too, because she was a pro. She never made the fatal error of addressing her charms only to the menfolk. She was delightful, and if the sun wasn’t out when she arrived at a show, she worked a kind of magic that ensured everyone thought it was.