He would have found Mick Bestwood’s house without any directions. What had once been a front garden had been concreted over and become the parking place for an enormous car Wexford recognised from the Wikipedia pictures as an Edsel Citation convertible, probably of 1958. It was sky-blue, not a pale greenish-yellow and so large and long as to dwarf the already small house behind it and the garage joined on to it.
The front door was opened by a young woman in a pink tracksuit he took to be Bestwood’s daughter, but she turned out to be his wife. Bestwood was a small spry man, maybe sixty-five but because of his still dark hair looking much younger. The marriage appeared to be quite recent to judge by the way the woman he addressed as Cassandra kept flashing her wedding and engagement rings. Wexford wondered if marriage had assumed a special status it hadn’t had for thirty or forty years now that so many couples lived together without benefit of registrar.
Mick Bestwood showed not the least surprise that someone had come to inquire about Edsels. The first thing he asked was if Wexford had noticed his own in the front garden. Wexford didn’t say he could hardly help noticing it and that a more appropriate question would be had he noticed the house, but simply answered that it was a nice car and in perfect condition.
‘It is,’ said Bestwood, ‘and only ten years younger than me. Wished I looked as good.’
‘Oh, Mick,’ said Cassandra. ‘You look lovely, you know you do.’
Bestwood took hold of her ring-flashing hand and smiled. ‘I’ve got another one in the garage – not mine. I’m looking after it for a customer.’ He said like a doctor, ‘So how can I help you?’
Wexford repeated what he had said to the Miracle Motors man. The hand was dropped and Bestwood got up.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ They went outside the way Wexford had come. ‘The chap was called Gray or Greig, can’t remember which but something like that. He had this Edsel, used to bring it to us for service and repairs. He worshipped that car. We heard he’d left it behind with his nephew and gone to live in Liphook, but when I say we heard it that was from the nephew, there was never a word out of Gray.’
Bestwood lifted up the up-and-over door on the garage. Inside, filling it, so that the first thing that struck Wexford was what skilful driving it must have taken to wedge it in there unscathed, was an enormous greenish-yellow car, streamlined and finned and spotlessly clean.
‘Where are the number plates?’
‘Are you asking me? Someone had nicked them before I ever set eyes on it.’ Bestwood gave the car a little pat as he might a beloved pet which had suffered some small injury. ‘Miracle Motors know very well it’s here, but that new manager’s got a head like a sieve, he said. ‘What happened was this. The nephew tried to sell it to us but we weren’t having that, not without the owner there or at least notification from him, not without the registration document. It was me told him to get his uncle to come in himself, but he never did and we never heard another word from him. Then one day – it would have been ’97 or ’98 and winter or autumn – I was in Notting Hill, passing through, I mean, on my way from Shepherds Bush, when I spotted this vehicle parked on a yellow line and plastered all over the front with parking tickets and without its number plates. I couldn’t stop then, but I went back later and had a good look. I talked to the then manager. We didn’t have an address for the nephew and all we had for Mr Gray or Greig was Liphook. It was what you might call a dilemma. We decided in the end to fetch the car. Oh, we hadn’t got the keys, but there are ways as I daresay you know. We brought it back to Miracle Motors, paid the fine incidentally and set about trying to contact Mr Gray. Or Greig.’
‘You did all this for someone else’s car?’
Bestwood looked at Wexford the way one might look at a man who has just taken an ice cream from a child or kicked a dog. ‘I’m talking about this car. This is an amazing car, a dream of a car. Right?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Well, me and Mr Mackenzie – he was the manager then – we talked about it, thought what to do. I don’t know if you know Liphook? It’s a small place. We didn’t know where to start, though. We’d no contact details for the young guy. All he’d said was his relation had gone to Liphook. The young guy up in St John’s Wood – what did he look like?’
‘I don’t know.’ Wexford thought of the young man’s body in the tomb. He hadn’t seen it, but he could imagine. But he had no reason, no reason at all, to connect that young man with one seen driving the Edsel. All he knew about the one in the tomb was that he had never been to a dentist and was in need of having one of his teeth filled, had been dressed in jeans and a jacket, whose pockets were full of jewellery worth £40,000 and a piece of paper with ‘Francine’ written on it and ‘La Punaise’. Oh, and a number, a four-figure number. None of that need be told to Bestwood. ‘What were you going to say about Liphook?’
‘Only that the young guy called him his “relation”. Funny that, wasn’t it? No one talks about his “relations”.’
‘You don’t remember the name?’
‘Only that it was the same name. Gray or Greig.’
‘It wasn’t Keith Hill?’
‘I told you. Gray or Greig. I tell you what, Wally Mackenzie might know. He knew all about it, said we should hang on to the vehicle, but he didn’t know where, there not being that much room at Miracle Motors, so I said let me hang on to it and he said why not. It was all above board. And I’ve had it ever since, taken good care of it, it’s been kept in perfect condition for Mr Gray or Greig if he ever comes back for it. Not likely now, though, is it?’
‘Do you know where Mr Mackenzie can be found?’
‘I know where he lives or used to live. Somewhere in Streatham.’
‘The registration document would help,’ Wexford said.
‘Sure it would, but where is it? I’ve never seen it.’ Bestwood went back to the open front door and called, ‘Cassandra, would you be a duck and fetch me the phone book, darling?’
Cassandra quickly became a duck and fetched it. ‘Here we are,’ said Bestwood. ‘W. P. H. Mackenzie, 27 Villiers Road, Streatham. It’s got to be the right one. No one else’d have three initials.’
Wexford said, ‘D’you mind if I have a look inside the boot?’
‘Be my guest. But you’ll find nothing in there. It’s all clean as a whistle.’
Wexford lifted the boot lid. The boot was empty. Of course. It was clean and odourless.
‘What are you looking for? Dead bodies?’
Bestwood laughed at his own joke.
Walter Mackenzie still lived at the Streatham address. He had left Miracle Motors two years before and gone into partnership with a friend starting a dealership in vintage cars in Norbury, a business which he told Wexford, when he was scarcely in the door, was feeling the recession’s bite. He was a small thin man, much younger than Bestwood, a sharp-voiced man whose tone held a hint of bitterness. The homely, even cosy, atmosphere chez Bestwood was lacking here. The place was furnished with the bare essentials, but cluttered with stacks of paper, magazines and what looked like bills and invoices in need of filing.
‘I remember him,’ he began. ‘He’d pinched that car from his uncle. Not a doubt about it. Wanted to sell it to us but I could see through that. I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘They were uncle and nephew? You’re sure of that?’
‘How can you be sure of something like that? He said he was his uncle. Why would he if he wasn’t?’
‘All right. What made you think he’d stolen the car?’