by James Oswald
The address I’ve got is halfway down the street, where the semi-detached houses end and the larger places begin. Some of them might be split into apartments, but from the look of the front doors they’re mostly single-occupier residences. You can almost smell the stench of money and I nearly turn back. Nothing can be so bad that I have to look to these kind of people for help. Then I remember the men in the pub, the blacked-out car and the red X on my front door. I don’t really have any choice.
For a moment, as I stand on the doorstep waiting for the bell to be answered, I wonder what I will look like to Charlotte when she appears. A scruffy young woman in jeans and a hoodie, rucksack thrown over one shoulder and a cat carrier box in the opposite hand. Perhaps I’m enjoying her anticipated look of horror too much, as it takes me a while to realise someone else entirely has come to the door. I recognise him of course, how could I not? The look on his face suggests it’s taking him a little while longer to see his own sister.
‘Can I help?’
‘I bloody well hope so, Ben. What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Con?’ His eyebrows disappear underneath his floppy ginger fringe and he stands there motionless, mouth half open like the door.
‘Who is it, sweetie?’ I hear Charlotte’s voice from the hall and a few pennies begin to drop. I should have seen it earlier, of course. The text, the surprise meeting in the pub, the hints in the conversation.
‘How long’s this been going on, then?’ I lift the cat carrier up slightly, feeling the dead weight of my new responsibility as it tries to pull my shoulder from its socket. ‘And are you going to invite me in or what?’
Benevolence steps back at the exact moment Charlotte appears in the hallway, and the two of them collide in best comedy fashion. My brother’s always been a clumsy oaf, and making it past twenty-seven doesn’t seem to have improved that much.
‘Connie? Is that you?’ Charlotte’s smile is wide, but I can see the way her eyes track over me, the hint of distaste at the sight I must present.
‘Sorry to drop by unannounced. I’m in a spot of bother and couldn’t think of anywhere else to turn.’ I hear my voice and wonder who’s speaking. ‘Spot of bother’, for fuck’s sake. It’s like I’ve stumbled into a P. G. Wodehouse novel.
‘Come in. Come in. Anything for Ben’s sister.’ Charlotte pushes my hapless brother back down the hall, opens the door fully and ushers me in. Only once the door’s closed behind me does she seem to notice what I’m carrying. ‘Is that a cat?’
I heave the cat carrier box up, catching sight of angry eyes in the darkness behind the bars. ‘It’s a long story. Couldn’t leave her behind.’
Charlotte looks unconvinced, but some deeply ingrained sense of hospitality stops her from speaking her mind. Had I been Mrs Feltham, dark-skinned and common, I’ve no doubt I’d have been turned away. But I’m one of her clan, for all that I’ve tried to distance myself from it for the last ten years and more. And she’s fucking my brother, so that counts for something too.
‘Come through to the living room, why don’t you?’ She leads me down a hallway big enough to sleep a dozen illegal immigrants and into a room bigger than my entire apartment. ‘Ben. Get your sister a drink.’ She turns back to me. ‘There’s a nice Pinot in the fridge, or we’ve some beer if you prefer?’
‘Actually, I’d kill for a coffee. Milk, no sugar.’
I know it’s wrong, but I could get used to this. Charlotte’s house in Elmstead Road is everything pre-teen me aspired to, after all. The only thing missing is a rich and handsome husband, but then I guess he’s the one who paid for all of this. The cat – I’ve still no idea what else to call her – seems to like this place better than my flat too, but that might have something to do with the many half-unpacked boxes lying around. It’s clear that Charlotte’s not long moved in and the living room is a feline paradise. At least she’s unpacked the coffee machine. Years of being catered for by the station canteen have dulled my palate; it’s a revelation to enjoy a cup of something that doesn’t have an aftertaste of styrofoam.
‘So how did you two hook up, then?’ I’m sitting on the floor beside an empty fireplace, back to a leather armchair piled high with yet more boxes. How can a thirty-year-old woman have accumulated so much stuff? Charlotte has draped herself over my brother on the matching sofa, the distance between us marked by an expensive Persian rug.
‘Funny story, that.’ Ben has a glass of wine, not his first of the evening. He waves it around like some theatrical prop as he speaks. ‘Char had this horrible break-up with Jack going on. Messy, you know? Expensive? She’s gone home to sort herself out and decides to go to the pub. You know, the Green Man?’ Like I don’t know the only pub in the village where I grew up. ‘I was there with Joel and Christopher, and it was like this great moment of truth, you know?’
My brother is full of shit at the best of times, but this is turning into one of his taller tales. ‘This how it really went, Charlotte?’ I ask before he can go into full epic bard mode.
‘Something like.’ She pushes herself up from the couch and runs her hands through her long blonde hair. I hate to think how high-maintenance that barnet is, and what my short crop must look like to her. ‘I know we were all horrible to each other when we were kids, but we’re grown-ups now. There’s a difference.’
The way she says it makes me wonder whether she really is, but I’m not about to protest. For the first time in days I feel reasonably relaxed, if not exactly safe. This is the last place the people who want to kill me will look. Undercover detective constables don’t hang out with high-society types as a general rule. I’m still sober though, whereas both of them are at least a glass of wine the wrong side of drunk. And I can’t forget the way Charlotte tracked me down. Or more accurately the way Ben pointed her in my direction.
‘Why were you looking for me anyway?’ I wince at the awkwardness of the question, but this isn’t an interview room and these aren’t suspects. They’re my little brother and a girl I’ve known all my childhood. And there’s something they really want to ask me but don’t know how. Christ, I hope it’s not something stupid like permission to get married.
‘You remember Isobel?’ Charlotte asks after a long enough pause for her to muss up her hair again.
‘Izzy? Of course. Not all that easy to forget, really.’
She narrows her eyes at me with an accusing glare, and I remember the faux-scandal that rippled through the village fifteen, sixteen years ago.
‘I never understood why nobody could believe she was your sister, Char. Just because your mum was – what? – forty-five when she had her.’
I’ve clearly said the right thing, as Charlotte relaxes, slumping back against my brother. He starts to play with her hair, and for a moment I’m filled with irrational jealousy, remembering how he used to do that to me.
‘Forty-three, which isn’t so old. Not nowadays anyway. But she wasn’t planned. I mean, nobody plans to have a kid at that age, right? It came as a total surprise. Last thing I expected on my fifteenth birthday was to be told I was going to have a little sister.’
It all comes flooding back. The gossip, the innuendo. I only understood half of it at the time, but even I could see how much my parents and the other adults in our tight-knit little community enjoyed the frisson of scandal. Charlotte’s mum and dad are much the same age as mine. She was an only child, spoiled rotten by wealthy parents. Half the village thought Izzy was Charlotte’s child, but I never quite believed that. We were at school together in the months leading up to Izzy’s arrival, and that’s not the sort of thing you can hide. Still, no one could quite believe Mrs DeVilliers might possibly have fallen pregnant at her age. Rumour had it that Roger DeVilliers was more interested in younger flesh anyway.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Roger wasn’t Izzy’s father, but I’d kept that suspicion to myself. I babysat her a few
times, remember her being a quiet kid, a bit sad maybe. Like with all of those people, I lost touch when I left home and joined the Met.
‘She must be . . . what? Fifteen now? Sixteen?’
Charlotte nods. ‘Sixteen last month. She’s at Saint Bert’s. Harriet House, the little swot.’
The names bring back memories, not all pleasant. I can only imagine our old school was split into six different houses to foster competitiveness among the pupils. Whoever came up with that idea was probably a man. Teenage girls are the most competitive creatures on the planet; they don’t need any extra encouragement. Charlotte was in Galliard House, which was full of sporty types. Harriet girls were more cerebral, so I’ve no idea what I was doing there.
‘The thing is, Connie, she’s gone AWOL, walkabout. Whatever.’
Charlotte says it so matter-of-factly that at first I don’t quite take on board what she means.
‘You mean she’s missing?’ I ask.
‘Sort of. Yes. She was meant to be getting the train home at the end of term, but instead she came down to London and then just disappeared.’
I’ve been half dozing, but now I’m wide awake. ‘Disappeared? You’ve informed the police, I take it? People are looking for her?’
Charlotte shrugs. ‘It’s not like she’s been abducted or anything. She’s phoned mum a couple of times, even called me once. Just won’t say where she is.’
I’ve not seen Izzy since she was about eight, so it’s hard to square what Charlotte’s saying with the quiet little girl I remember. Even so, the casual reaction to her disappearance feels deeply strange. ‘You seem very calm about this, Char. How can you be sure she’s not under duress? Have you spoken to the police?’
‘I rather thought that was what I was doing.’ She takes a long drink from her glass of wine. ‘Besides, it’s not the first time she’s done it. She’s always been independent-minded anyway, and the ’rentals don’t seem to care much what she does. Pisses me off when you think how strict they were with me.’
‘Christ, Char. If it was my little sister missing I’d be out there looking for her. Hell, I’d be breaking down doors.’
‘You always were more forceful than me. But it’s like I said. She’s done it before. They caught her on a train to Edinburgh without a ticket when she was twelve. Last year the police found her in Dundee, of all places. This time they’re less interested. She’s sixteen now, so technically old enough to do her own thing. Every time I try to bring it up with Father he just tells me it’s none of my business.’
‘So you’ve not done anything to try and find her?’
Charlotte shakes her head, tugging her hair out of Ben’s grasp.
‘The thing is, Con,’ he says. ‘We were rather wondering if you might be able to help track her down.’
There are some things you can get away with when you’re speaking to a stranger that just don’t work with someone you’ve known all your life. Charlotte’s been working her way around the subject all evening, but Ben’s never been so subtle. This is exactly what they were trying to set up before. Only they can’t have known I’ve been suspended for the past fortnight, will probably be out of a job by the end of the month. Can they?
‘You do know I’m not a private detective, right?’
‘Yeah, but you are a detective. And it’s not like you’ve got anything else to do now, have you?’
14
The used car trade’s not what it used to be. Rules and regulations, fairly regular checks by the authorities and a largely functional nationwide database of registrations has seen to that. There’s still plenty of old-school dodgy used-car salesmen out there though. I’ve arrested a few in my time, investigated even more. I never thought I’d need to turn to one for help.
Sammi Khan’s probably more trustworthy than most, mind you. He works out of a lot that used to be a petrol station, back in the days when cars could only go a couple of hundred miles before needing a refill. At least that’s the way Pete always used to describe them. I can drive, passed my test as soon as I was old enough to take it, but living in London a car’s more of a liability than an asset. Most of the time. I’ve managed without one until now.
There’s maybe a dozen cars parked so closely together on the forecourt you can barely slide between them, let alone open the doors. They’re bland, old, a mixture of Fords and Vauxhalls well past their crush-by date. Pride of place goes to a lowered BMW, tricked out to look like an M3. Its windows are tinted so dark it must get pulled over every time it’s driven. The wheels are too small for an M too. More likely it’s got a wheezy four-cylinder 1600 diesel engine in it. The sticker price is as optimistic as a dog tied up outside the butcher’s.
‘Detective Constable Fairchild. This is a pleasant surprise.’
I turn to see Sammi appear from the single-storey block that once must have been where you went to pay for your petrol but now serves as the headquarters of his automotive empire. He’s almost as bling as the BMW, immaculately dressed like a man who has just stepped out of the 1970s. I’m impressed both that he recognises me and that he remembers my name. I didn’t think our last meeting was that memorable, and Pete did most of the talking.
‘Mr Khan.’ I shake his hand as he offers it, watch as his gaze drifts past me to see if there is anyone else about.
‘The detective inspector not with you today?’
The question is genuinely innocent, but it cuts through me all the same. Pete’s loss is still raw, the truth that he will never be with me again hard to accept. Not today, not any other day.
‘No. This isn’t a police matter. Actually, it’s fairly simple. I need to buy a car. Preferably reliable, definitely cheap.’
A beat of hesitation, perhaps a wrinkle of confusion across his brow, and then Sammi beams a wide smile. ‘Of course! Of course! Well, you have come to the right place. All my cars are reliable.’
I notice he’s said nothing about being cheap. ‘Even this one?’ I nod my head towards the BMW and he has the decency to look if not embarrassed then at least a little chastened.
‘Maybe, maybe. But this is a car for a young man trying to impress his lady friends. You, I think, are needing something a little less . . . noticeable?’
‘And cheaper. That price is at least two grand more than the car’s worth, and you know it.’
‘A man has to make a living, Detective Constable.’ Sammi shrugs. ‘But for my friends in the Met, I think I can do something. In fact, I may have just the very thing. Come. Follow me.’
He sets off towards the workshop at the back of the lot without looking to see if I’m following. For a moment I think he’s leading me to the close-parked repmobiles, but he slides past the far one and leads me through a small gate into a larger compound at the back. Most of the cars here are in various stages of disassembly, wheels stacked up in one corner and a couple of whole engines on oily pallets. Over at the far side, by a wire mesh gate opening up onto the back lane, a lone car cowers as if in terror of being taken to pieces. It’s filthy, but underneath the grime is white paint. Boxy sides designed with a straight edge and square.
‘A Volvo? A Volvo estate?’ I can’t quite keep the disbelief from my voice.
‘Just came in today. A . . . friend owed me money. Gave me this to settle the debt. It’s all above board. Paperwork’s in order, year’s MOT. She’s ready to go.’
We’re closer to the car now, and as my initial shock wears off I start to take in a bit more detail. Through the grime, it looks pretty straight, no sign of rust or damage. The seats are black leather or something that looks a lot like it. Alloy wheels have taken a lot of damage from the city’s kerbs, but the tyres are all the same manufacturer and look to have a bit of tread still on them. The badge has gone from the boot lid and the number plate tells me it was first registered before I was old enough to drive. It’s anonymous though, and Volvos are pretty bulle
tproof.
‘How much are you looking for?’ I hear myself ask before my brain has time to catch up.
‘If I put her through the workshop, clean her up a bit, maybe some new wheels, I’d be asking for three thousand.’ Sammi must see my raised eyebrows. ‘But like this, for you, to take away now? Fifteen hundred.’
Realistically I don’t think I’ll get something worth bothering with for less, but I haggle anyway. ‘A grand. Cash. And if it breaks down before I get home I’ll send some of my mates round to see you about it.’
Sammi hesitates just long enough for me to know he’s faking it, then holds out his hand again. ‘Deal.’
And just like that I’ve bought myself a car.
There’s nowhere to park near my flat, but I’m not going back there anyway. Chances are it’s been staked out by someone keen to make some cash from whichever mob boss wants me out of the way. Elmstead Road is a bit easier, although navigating the complex one-way system means I get more of a drive in my new car than I’d expected. For all that used-car dealers have a well-deserved reputation, I think Sammi’s done me OK with this one. It’s old, and has done well over 100,000 miles already, but its engine is sweet and surprisingly powerful.
The biggest joke is that it’s obviously an ex-squad car, probably Motorway Patrol from Essex Constabulary. Someone’s swapped the interior to cover up the more obvious modifications, but there’s holes in the dashboard where some of the kit’s been fitted and removed. That would explain the high mileage, and at least I know it’s been well cared for early on in its long life.
Charlotte opens the front door about five minutes after I first press the buzzer. Her long blonde hair looks perfect even when it’s mussed up with sleep, and her confused expression as she stares at me with bleary eyes reminds me of a lifestyle I quit years ago.