♦
A more or less typical customer arrives asking to speak to Fat Les. He is young, has a wacky haircut, Bermuda shorts, big trainers and a baseball cap worn back to front. Les steps out of the office. The customer, who introduces himself as Spider, wants to shake Les by the hand and say what an honour it is to meet him. Fat Les goes through the motions of being an incredibly minor celebrity then asks Spider what he can do for him.
“Well,” says Spider, “I’ve got a Beetle out there.” Les looks out through the plate glass of the showroom window and sure enough there’s a Beetle parked outside. It looks old and careworn, a bit rusty here and there, sitting a touch softly on its suspension. At the most, it would make a cheap runabout.
“I was thinking of having it done up a bit,” says Spider. “I was thinking of having it Resto-Cal. I was thinking about Empis and pearl lacquer, and flared wings, and one piece electric windows and a sun roof.”
“Yeah,” says Les. “I can do that for you.”
“And then,” Spider continues, “I was thinking about hotting up the engine, say a BBT 1914, with an Eagle cam, 041 heads, twin 40 Dellortos.”
“Sure,” says Les. “I can do that.”
“And my girlfriend says it’s got to have a nice interior, you know, maybe grey and blue leather, and midnight blue carpets, and a big stereo — detachable. Oh, and shaved door handles and central locking and a damn good alarm system.”
“No sweat,” says Les. “When do you want me to start?”
“Well, I was hoping you’d give me a quote first.”
Les looks at him with pity and contempt and says nothing.
“I guess this is going to cost me, right?” says Spider.
Les nods.
“I guess it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg, right?”
Les considers for a while before saying, “I think I might have to take your soul in part exchange.”
“Oh well,” says Spider, “in that case I’ll have to think about it.”
♦
Later that same day Les confronts one of his previous customers, and he is not a satisfied customer. He arrives in a pretty spiffy looking Beetle. It has been lowered, given a two-tone paint job in metallic turquoise and peppermint green, given suicide doors, an upgraded engine and heavy duty suspension. It stops abruptly outside the showroom, with a metallic clank. Hip hop music pumps out of the stereo and the driver gets out, a gangly young black man with Lycra cycling shorts and a pair of sunglasses that cost as much as some secondhand cars. His name is Zak. Les remembers a time when a young black guy wouldn’t have been seen dead in a Volkswagen Beetle; far, far too uncool. Times change.
Zak strides up to Fat Les and says, “Les, old pal, I’m not happy.”
Les, who is not a man for the old pals act, replies, “What is it? Piles?”
Zak would like to laugh, break the ice, establish a rapport with Les, but he can’t, and then he sees that Les isn’t laughing either.
“It’s the car,” he says.
“Get away,” replies Les. “What seems to be the problem?”
Les is always careful to use words like ‘seem’.
“Well, the paintwork for a start,” says Zak.
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a bloody eye-sore isn’t it, but it’s what you asked for.”
“I don’t mean the colour. I mean it’s starting to bubble.”
“Well, of course it’s starting to bubble.”
“But you only did the respray three months ago.”
“Well, it was only cheap respray,” says Les.
“No it wasn’t,” says Zak.
“Take it from me, it was a cheap respray. And on a twenty-year-old car. Put a cheap respray on a twenty-year-old car and the chances are it’s going to bubble. In fact, even if you’d stripped it back to the bare metal and given it a full rustproofing you’d probably still be standing here saying the same thing, and that would have cost you twice as much money. So basically, I’ve saved you a wad of cash, right?”
Zak is not quite dumb enough to accept this. He wonders if it would do him any good to get angry, but he suspects not. He has other complaints to air. The quality of the respray is the least of his problems.
“And the performance,” he says. “I keep getting burned off at the lights by everything; Ladas, 2CVs, Ford Transits, everything.”
“Well,” says Fat Les, “that’s probably because you’re driving a Beetle.”
“But I thought that with all the engine modifications I’d be the hottest thing on the road.”
“Did I tell you that?” Les enquires.
“Well no, not in so many words.”
“Not in any words,” Les adds.
“And you know,” the hapless Zak continues, “it won’t handle or go round corners very well, and it doesn’t stop the way I’d like it to, and it has a few flat spots and it stalls a lot when it’s cold.”
Fat Les looks at him with a certain sympathy, as though he understands and knows what the trouble is.
“Yep,” he says, “that sounds like a Volkswagen Beetle.”
Zak looks very unhappy indeed.
He says, “Look, I could get really bloody upset about this, because I think you could be ripping me off, man. I think you might take me for a mug. Like you think I’m ignorant and stupid and don’t know anything about cars. And I think you might be doing that because I’m black.”
Fat Les looks at him mournfully.
“No,” he says. “I treat all my customers the same way.”
♦
After he’s gone half a mile or so Carlton Bax hears a sudden muffled bang. It’s difficult to tell how far away it is or even which direction it’s coming from. But it isn’t the sort of bang you become very alarmed about or stop your car for. It certainly doesn’t occur to Carlton Bax that it comes from the direction of his own home, and even if it had, he certainly wouldn’t have reason to suspect that it had actually come from his own garage. It would never in a million years occur to him that what he had heard was the sound of one of his own precious Volkswagens exploding, which is precisely what it is.
He drives on oblivious. The traffic isn’t heavy. He has the radio tuned to a phone-in on female eating disorders. He’s feeling buoyant and optimistic. When he hears another, infinitely smaller noise coming from behind his seat in the Range Rover, a kind of metallic rustling, he assumes it can be nothing more serious than an empty drinks can rolling around on the floor. He is completely wrong.
He arrives at a red traffic light and stops. He begins to turn around to see precisely what caused the noise and the moment he does so he becomes aware of a human presence and feels something metallic pressed into his neck. He isn’t exactly familiar with the sensation of a gun barrel against his flesh but that is undoubtedly what it feels like. He freezes. He looks in the rear view mirror but can see nothing. Then a voice belonging to someone who was obviously hiding behind the seat, a voice that is so plain and neutral as subsequently to be unidentifiable, says, “Good morning Mr Bax. Just do what I tell you and you won’t get hurt.” Carlton Bax has no desire to get hurt. The lights change and he drives off following directions to some fearful and unknown destination.
♦
And that, essentially, is the beginning of everything. A famous Volkswagen collector disappears, and one of the Beetles in his collection is blown up. That would be strange enough in itself, but there are other forms of strangeness. The explosion in Carlton Bax’s garage is only the first of a great many.