by Chris Dolley
Even odder were the letters MD – it may stand for doctor of medicine in English but it meant nothing in French. Doctors called themselves docteur – that’s all.
And Sur Rendez-Vous just meant ’by appointment.’
I began to wonder what else this letter said.
Simon read it out. It was a fax to Elaine Varley dated 30th May.
Having found my husband’s reply to your fax less than complete, here are our witnessed signatures in approval of your payment to my husband’s account with Banca Zaragoza. We would prefer payment by bank draft or transfer and are sending the necessary documents to the bank to convert the account to both our names.
We have written to our solicitor asking him to forward to you all documentation concerning this investment, and would ask that any correspondence you send us be by normal mail, your last letter having taken a fortnight to reach us.
Thank you for your assistance.
And at the bottom of the letter, underneath our forged signatures was the line - I confirm the identity, having seen passports, of the two persons who sign this letter. G.PERGONINI M.D.
So, on the 30th May, someone writes to Elaine Varley saying they’ve written to their solicitor asking for the bond’s documentation to be forwarded, and on the 9th June someone writes to us asking for that same documentation to be sent to Elaine Varley. It fitted.
And would that explain why she wasn’t surprised to hear from me? Having already requested the originals in some earlier letter?
And how many earlier letters were there? What did they say? I needed to see them. Could I have copies?
“Have you got a fax?”
I hadn’t, which meant a delay of at least four working days for the post to arrive. And I couldn’t wait four days – the suspense would kill me.
And then I remembered our estate agent. He had a fax ... and I might have the number.
I ran into the study. My desk was in its usual mess. Twenty seconds later it entered new levels of untidiness as reams of papers were picked up, shuffled and thrown aside. It had to be here! Somewhere! Where was it?
And then I found it, a letter from the estate agent who’d sold us our house. And there was his fax number on the letterhead. He was only a half hour’s drive away and I was sure he wouldn’t mind. It was a crisis after all.
I ran back to the phone and gave the details to Simon. He’d fax the papers through immediately.
This was getting quite exciting. Even enjoyable. It was like living in your own whodunit. Every day a new letter, a new clue, a new twist. It was better than TV.
I rang David Jarvis, our estate agent. I thought I’d better warn him before his fax filled his entire office with forged correspondence.
But he wasn’t there. So I left a message on his answerphone.
And then I went straight for the telephone directory – there’s no rest for the amateur detective – what was that doctor’s name? Pergonini?
I scanned Aurignac for Pergoninis. Nothing. Not even anything close.
I then checked Cassagne just to see if doctors were ex-directory. Ours wasn’t; I could see his entry, with médecin after his name. No hint of an MD.
And the name had to be false, didn’t it? Otherwise it meant he’d seen our passports – which was impossible, we’d never let them out of our sight.
Had we?
A quick sprint back into the study and a mad search through our box of files. Household Accounts, Insurance, Medical ... Passports! There they were. Both of them, safe and snug. Thank God for that.
Which meant no Pergonini could have seen our passports.
Unless someone used forgeries.
oOo
About half past four the phone rang again. It was David, our estate agent. He’d stepped into his office and almost tripped over a box of fax paper that had spewed out from his machine. What had happened? He’d heard my message but was it really true?
I assured him it was and gave him a quick précis of events so far. He was amazed.
And not sure if he’d received the complete fax message. There were pages of my fax interleaved with other faxes all over the place. He’d checked the name on the fax header and rung up Simon to ask for the fax to be re-transmitted. In the meantime, he’d decollate what he could and make sure it went into that evening’s post. We should have it tomorrow. And could we keep him informed? He was intrigued to know how it all turned out.
I replaced the receiver and collapsed onto the settee, wound down my internal detective agency and thought about tomorrow. We had the car booked in for a service. I’d have to get the documentation together and prepare a script.
And then I remembered that other garage. The one we’d bought the car from. The one with the dubious ’Get out of Jail free’ cards. They’d had Shelagh’s passport for a month. February through March.
A garage in Boulogne sur Save.
Fraud and Warp Coils
I wasn’t sure if I was sinking into paranoia or just belatedly suspicious. People impersonate us, stay at a hotel in Boulogne sur Save, claim to use passports to verify their identities. All this happening sometime in April and May. And in March, Shelagh’s passport spends the month holidaying at a nearby garage.
Coincidence?
I rolled out of bed the next morning, my mind besieged by conspiracies and lurking doppelgangers.
But today was a new day and I threw back the curtains to greet it. The sun was shining, the sky was blue…
And a dustman was relieving himself against our fence post.
It must be Tuesday.
And we had a car to service.
oOo
We had considered, very briefly, ringing up the garage to postpone, but we’d had so much trouble arranging it in the first place we didn’t dare cancel.
And our car did need servicing – or perhaps, counselling would have been a better word – it didn’t like the wet, didn’t like the cold and you couldn’t do a thing with it in the mornings.
Ten minutes into a journey and it was fine but those first ten minutes – well, it wasn’t natural. Whatever combination of choke I tried – in, out or yanked over my shoulder – it was wrong, and the car would stall. Usually as I was trying to pull out into a major road.
Which led us to the conclusion that with winter approaching perhaps it would be a good time to have the car serviced.
Easier said than done.
We’d looked up ’car service’ in the dictionary and found the word révision. Ok, so far, but as soon as we checked the Yellow Pages and the garage ads in the local paper – nothing. The word révision was mysteriously absent. Didn’t they do car services in France? Or was it taken for granted and they didn’t feel the need to advertise?
We decided to try the local garage. Or what we assumed to be the local garage. It had CITROEN written in large letters above the door but we’d never seen any signs of life within. And the pile of cars outside never seemed to change.
But it was close by and we could walk home if we needed to leave the car there for any length of time.
We had the conversation mapped out as usual. We’d ask, “can you service our car?” and then, according to their oui or non, we’d either leave or move onto our next question. After all, what else was there you could say about a car service?
Apparently, quite a lot.
We stood in front of the garage, expectantly waiting for the oui or non, our slip of paper ready to provide the next line of dialogue, and out came several sentences devoid of ouis, nons or anything else we recognised. After requests to speak lentement and our by now mandatory prefix of nous sommes Anglais, we realised he was asking us what needed servicing.
We pointed to the car.
He asked us what part of the car.
“What part of the car?”
“Oui.”
I looked at our script. Besides the part where he said ’oui’, I was lost. Were we really being asked to give a list of all the parts we wanted checking?
&
nbsp; I tried to get back on script with an attempt to ask for a full service. But this was met with a blank stare.
Out came the dictionary and a frantic search for terms like oil change and brakes and spark plugs and whatever else we could scavenge from memories not attuned to the internal workings of the motor car. Was this some kind of test to see if we merited his attention?
He seemed to like vidange, the French for oil change, but nothing else. And he’d do that for two hundred Francs.
We decided to make a tactical withdrawal and regroup back at the house with the dictionary and Yellow Pages. We didn’t fancy the idea of having the car serviced one piece at a time – a vidange here and a spark plug there.
oOo
I scanned the Yellow Pages again. This time looking to see what services they did advertise. Perhaps they didn’t use the word révision any more? Perhaps they’d anglicised it to le service as they’d done with le parking and le shopping?
I found plenty of garages offering ’service’ – but when I checked the dictionary I found this could mean after sales service. But I also noticed the word entretien appearing again and again in the ads. I looked that up in our dictionary and found ... car service. I could not believe it! I checked the dictionary again for ’car service’ and found révision – no mention of entretien at all. My faith in our dictionary crashed. What good was it if they didn’t cross-reference all the terms? Were we really supposed to check through all the French words just in case there was another word for the one we wanted?
But we did have a new word and with it a new lead.
The next day we decided to take a detour from our normal shopping route and cruise the main road outside St. Gaudens where all the big garages and car dealers were. With any luck we’d find one offering entretiens for Citroens.
We soon found one offering entretiens pour tous marques. At last! Armed with our revised script, we entered.
“Do you service cars?” seemed on the superfluous side as an opening question at a garage specialising in nothing but the servicing of cars, so we skipped that one and went onto the next.
“How much does it cost to service a Citroen AX?”
“What kind of service?” came the reply, or words to that general effect.
The conversation was wavering but still on script.
“A full service,” I countered.
“Non.” He shook his head.
This was not the right answer. ’Non’ could only be used on questions one, three, eight and nine. I knew – I had the script. And would have pointed out his error if he hadn’t then asked me how many kilometres we’d driven.
A glimmer of hope. He may have started ad libbing but he’d asked me a question I knew the answer to – 160,000. And I could see the way back on script. Obviously he wanted to know how many kilometres the car had done to determine the type of service required.
He then asked me how many kilometres were on the clock when we’d bought it? This was not so good. Why would he want to know that?
“155,000?” I answered dubiously, anxiously fingering the script trying to spot the next likely question.
Which was unintelligible. Equally so when he repeated it slowly. I looked at Shelagh and she looked at me. And then both of us looked back at the mechanic.
Who started speaking very quickly and waving his arms. We caught odd phrases, enough to know that something was très important and somehow the mileage was the key. It sounded like ’warp coil’.
“Did he just say warp coil?” I asked Shelagh.
“That’s what I thought,” she answered, relieved, I think, by the fact that she hadn’t been the one to raise the question. We might not know much about the internal combustion engine but we knew all about warp coils. But did Citroen really have warp technology?
We turned to face the mechanic with renewed respect.
He was still in the throes of trying to explain what would happen if the warp coil failed while we were driving. But he didn’t need to. We’d watched enough Star Trek to know that the warp engines would have to be taken off-line and the moment that happened a Romulan warbird would de-cloak off the starboard bow.
So, we definitely had to have the warp coil looked at. We nodded sagely.
He liked that. Expensive but necessary, he said.
“How expensive?” I asked.
“Perhaps 500 francs.” And then he asked us what else needed servicing.
Not again!
“A full service?” I repeated, determined to claw the conversation back on script.
“Non, too expensive,” he replied.
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of garage we’d walked into. I’d been so used to hearing reports in England about garages overcharging and performing unnecessary work, that I couldn’t conceive of one turning down work on the grounds that it would cost too much.
I turned to our back-up list. After our last encounter at a garage, we’d prepared a list of car parts we’d like looking at – just in case.
I opened with vidange.
“Oui,” he nodded.
Good start. “Brakes,” I continued.
“Non, too expensive.”
What? How could checking the brakes be too expensive! He then went on to explain he’d have to take the wheels off and if the brakes were Ok it would be a waste of time.
“Were there any problems with the brakes?” he continued.
Not really but...
He said he’d give them a road test if we wanted but nothing else unless he found a problem.
We struggled through the rest of our list. Meeting more nons and shakes than ouis and nods. Perhaps the French only serviced their cars when something fell off.
But we booked our rendez-vous. Nine o’clock, Tuesday. Today.
oOo
We definitely had to go through with it. Being robbed was one thing but having a dodgy warp coil was something far, far worse.
John, my brother-in-law, came over just before half eight as arranged. I think he wanted to hear the latest instalment of the Crime of the Century. He’d follow us in and then drive us back.
Off we set with the car playing up as usual – I’m sure it knew it was going to the garage. Certainly its behaviour was reminiscent of Gypsy en route to the vet – plenty of complaining and digging in of tyres. About halfway there the engine cut out, just as I was pulling out at a junction. I quickly restarted the car – I was getting pretty quick with all the practice – and was just slipping into gear when.... Crash! There was a thumping noise and the car lurched forward.
The warp coil!
Merde!
I looked at Shelagh and I could tell she was thinking the same thing – of all the times for the warp coil to blow, it had to be on the way to the garage! Why couldn’t it wait another ten minutes?
I tentatively tried the engine again – ever the optimist – and was relieved to hear it start. Perhaps it wasn’t irretrievable after all? We limped off the junction and found a patch of ground where we could park safely. John pulled in behind us.
I wearily pushed open the door and was in the process of struggling with the bonnet when I heard John apologising.
What?
“Sorry, I thought you’d pulled out. I took my eye off the road for a while and...”
Ran into the back of us.
My first traffic accident. Years and years of safe driving behind me and then my brother-in-law runs into the back of me while I’m stationary at a road junction.
But at least it wasn’t the warp coil.
Which at that moment was a considerable plus.
We surveyed the slightly crumpled back bumper, the smashed tail lights and the boot which no longer fastened. Minor damage. Nothing compared with ringing up a garage and fighting to make yourself understood in halting French – please come and collect the car, the warp engine’s blown and there are dilithium crystals all over the roundabout!
So, we resumed our journey. We toyed with idea of adding the damage to
the list of things to be looked at by the garage but quickly dismissed the idea. They’d probably say it was too expensive. And John was confident he could knock everything back into shape himself.
We left the car at the garage and arranged to return at four.
oOo
Back home, we waited for the poste. About ten, the familiar yellow car wound its way towards us and dropped off our mail at our boite aux lettres at the end of the drive.
But no thick envelope from David Jarvis.
I was disappointed to say the least. I couldn’t wait to read the next instalment. Now I’d have to wait until tomorrow.
Which naturally led to a bout of recriminations. Why had we let him put it in the post? Why didn’t we drive to Castlenau last night and pick up the fax immediately? Why? Why? Why?
I think we were lapsing back into guilt.
Luckily the phone rang before we could sink any further. It was Andy Chatfield. Perhaps he’d found another medical query?
But no, this time he wanted to know about a cancellation form. Had we received it?
I didn’t know. What would it look like?
An A4 piece of paper with the words CANCELLATION FORM prominently displayed.
Well, I did ask. Not that I could remember ever receiving one.
“When would it have arrived?”
“It was sent on the 22nd of March.”
I still couldn’t remember. I asked Andy to wait while I went through my files. I’d sorted through all the correspondence from Eastleigh and Howard and Mutual Friendly over the weekend. If I’d received a cancellation form it should be there.
I couldn’t see one.
I gathered up the file and took it back to the phone. The earliest letter I had from Mutual Friendly was dated April 3rd.
“That would be the Policy Schedules.”
It was. I had copies of the Policy Schedules, an initial valuation of the bond and several pages entitled “Your Right to Change Your Mind.”
“Your right to change your mind?”
“Yes.”
“That would have accompanied the cancellation form.”