by John Barlow
One look at it and he’s thinking longingly of Spain.
“You want?” she asks.
“Not just now, thanks.”
“Sure?”
She sets it down next to the Gaggia and serves herself a slice.
“I think we might be beginning to attract people for your food rather than the cars.” He glances around at the empty showroom. “Not this morning, though.”
“The police,” she says, waving an empty fork out in front of her, words partly muffled by soft potato, “probably frightened people away.”
“Been back already, have they?”
“They parked right outside. Two cars. One of ’em with, you know, the lights on top.”
He nods, then notices how incredibly quiet the place is. There’s no music playing. But it’s not just that. It’s Freddy. Without him the showroom is dull and soulless. This is Freddy’s sales floor, his domain. He sets it up, and when a customer walks through the door he knows exactly where to steer them. The perfect salesman.
Without Freddy, Tony Ray’s Motors is nothing. He’d stood with John and watched as the great sheets of curved glass were lifted into position, and they’d popped Champagne together when they opened for business, wondering who on earth was gonna venture down Hope Road for a secondhand beemer. About eighty percent of sales are Freddy’s, and John often jokes that by rights the business should be his. The truth is it was never a joke. If everything goes to plan, in five years’ time the place will be signed over to Freddy. He doesn’t know it yet. And he might never need to, because things have just started not going to plan…
“Two cars?” he says. “They must have thought Freddy might be here.”
“Yeah, well he isn’t,” she says. “He called me, though.”
“He called?”
“This morning, soon as I got in. ‘Tell John I’m sorry.’ That’s all he said.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Would it have helped?” She holds open her hands, the gesture almost protective, like a parent indulging a teenager. “My Uncle Henrique, y’know, he always says, piensa luego habla, ‘think then talk’. So that’s what I did. Think. And now I talk.”
“Perhaps in future just talk, right?”
“He sounded in trouble,” she says, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her tight black jeans. “Anyway, he rings me, yeah? My phone. But if you want I tell everything to everyone, you, police, everybody. About Freddy… the Mondeo…”
“That’s all he said?” he asks, ignoring her petulance. “That he was sorry?”
“Yes. Nothing else. He hung up.”
John flops down to the floor, his back against a car, legs out in front of him on the polished concrete floor.
“It’s the girl, isn’t it?” she says. “The one on the news. The police wouldn’t tell me why they were here, but it was on the radio when they arrived…”
“Shit, it’s only just turned eleven. It’s on the news already?”
“Sí. A young woman, it said. Found dead in a car.”
“It was the Mondeo. She was in the boot,” he says, hanging his head and rubbing his face in both hands. “What did the police say?”
“They asked me where I was last night.”
“What did you tell ’em?”
“Movie and then a pizza at a friend’s flat, then sex til late.”
“You told ’em that?”
“Why not? It’s the truth. And the neighbours downstairs bang on the ceiling every time we put on music. You know the type…”
The type who like to sleep at night, yeah, I know.
He has to smile. He and Connie have got the same alibi for last night. Only Connie has witnesses, and they’re armed with broom handles.
“I had to give them my friend’s number, as well,” she adds. “One of ’em went outside and phoned him straightaway.” She holds up her cell phone. “He told ’em the same.”
She pockets the phone and eats more omelette.
“Think, then talk!” John says. “What did your uncle Henrique do, anyway?”
“Same as your dad.”
“Henrique? Didn’t he make ceramic tiles or something?”
She exhales theatrically. “And your dad, he sold cars, right?”
If there’s a twinkle in her eyes, it’s dampened by their dark, slightly puffy appearance. The eyes, never mind the neighbours, confirm what she was doing last night.
He remains there on the floor, watching her eat. His thoughts turn again to Spain, then to his dad. It had been a fine, warm afternoon, and they were in the carefully manicured gardens of the nursing home, amid some of the region’s most pampered geriatrics. There’s a girl from Spain, Dad said. The daughter of someone they knew back in the old country, just a chiquilla, a young thing…
It was the only time he’d ever asked anything of John. Do this for me, he said with an easy smile, the Tony Ray smile, the one that had always got him whatever he wanted. Let this slip of a girl work in the new showroom. A favour to her family back home…
For a long time no girl showed up. John forgot all about it. Then she arrived, all hair and winking buttocks. And the truth was that although he couldn’t say exactly how or why, Connie was a godsend.
***
They make coffee and take it outside. The early autumn sun has crept down onto Hope Road and the wind has dropped. Nestled in the inward curve of the showroom’s glass frontage, it could almost be mid-morning on the continent.
“So,” he says, lighting a cigarette and savouring the tobacco rush as he inhales, trying to ignore the heady mix of self-loathing and guilty pleasure of the failed ex-smoker, “what did the police ask you about the car?”
“They say they wanna see where it was. I show them, out back. They look at the gate. No damage, still locked. We come inside, and they ask if it’s in the computer.”
“The Mondeo?”
“I say yes, I suppose. We look, and it isn’t. I say it’s only been here a few days. I haven’t got around to it, y’know.” She glances at him and takes a quick drag on her cigarette. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Anything else?”
“They took the security video for yesterday.”
“Shit, the video. Did you manage to go through it before they arrived?”
“Yes. Freddy took the car at midnight, a few minutes after. Looked in a hurry. And worried.”
“Did they take all the surveillance tapes for last week?”
She shakes her head.
“No,” she says, taking a sip of coffee then fiddling with her cigarette. “I put the others in the filing cabinet in the office.”
“You hid them?”
She shrugs. “That’s where the video recorder is. It’s normal. The police, they say is this the only tape? I think they mean for last night. It’s true.”
Withholding evidence?
He detects the slightest hint of a smile as she fills her lungs with guilt-free tobacco smoke and blows it out in one long plume above their heads.
John gives Freddy another try. This time Freddy answers.
“Freddy!” he says, sticking a finger into his ear. “Where the hell are you?”
He listens, but Freddy isn’t making much sense, other than that he keeps saying sorry.
“Freddy, listen. What happened?”
“She’s dead,” is all he can hear between long bouts of phlegmy coughing and what sounds like the drawl of exhaustion.
“Who, Freddy?”
“In the room,” he says, but quietly, as if he’s trying to make sure no one overhears.
“What room, Freddy? What happened?”
The reply is even more muffled. ‘I don’t know’, he thinks he hears, but the voice is distant now, drowned out by a metallic sound, an echoey jangle, something familiar that he can’t quite place.
“Freddy? Freddy?”
But Freddy’s gone.
John rings again. Nothing. Phone unavailable.
/> “Shit!” he says, tossing his iPhone onto the table.
“Did he say a room?” Connie asks.
He nods. “And not much else. He knows about the girl though.”
He looks through the glass into the showroom. Freddy’s little kingdom. Big, barrel-chested Freddy, who only has to stand next to a car and it’s sold. He’s not perfect, but there’s no way he raped and killed a girl and dumped her in a car.
A car with fifty grand in it.
“So what do you think?” he asks Connie.
“I think he’s in love.”
“What!”
“You must have noticed. Jumpy, excited, full of life?”
“He’s always full of life.”
“And he said a room?” Connie asks.
“Yes. His flat, could it be? The police’ll already be there. No point me going. And it’s the room, he says. What does that mean? What room? Jesus, Freddy!”
“Try the Eurolodge. It’s a hotel, not far from here. Eurolodge Hotel.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. Up on the York Road. But, what, he had a room there?”
“No. But he’s been there a lot. Last few weeks. I’ve heard him planning to meet people up there.”
She stands and gathers the cups and saucers.
John looks again at his empty showroom.
“While I’m gone,” he says, “would you…”
“I know. Look at the other videos, see if he’s borrowed the car before.”
He watches her go, the rip in her jeans winking at him.
Think then speak… I like it.
Nine
The Eurolodge Hotel occupies a squat, pre-war office block a mile out of town on the York Road. When the building was new it would have been right next to the trams going in and out of the city. But now its two stories of old red brick and stained concrete sit beside four lanes of relentless, fast-moving traffic.
There are two shops opposite the hotel. One is a voluntary community centre, although it’s closed today, the other to let. Behind the hotel is a wide expanse of disused land, and further off a couple of industrial units and a boarded-up pub.
“What the fuck, Freddy?” he says, hoisting himself out of his dark blue Saab.
The hotel’s windows have been painted maroon, and a modern revolving door, flanked by smoked glass on both sides, looks ridiculously out of place. Above it is the single word Eurolodge in white neon. You’re supposed to know it’s a hotel.
The door is stiff, its hiss low and pronounced as it moves slowly round. Inside, no muzak plays, and there’s no pinging elevators or sales reps talking loudly into their phones. Nothing. He’s in a small reception, and he’s on his own. The only sound comes from two strip lights overhead, which emit the faintest of hums; that, and the rumble from traffic outside.
“Good morning.”
He appears from double doors behind the reception. Mid-thirties. Jeans and a black pullover (the hotel is not particularly warm, John notices). The skin around the man’s eyes is grey, his sickly complexion made worse by the lights.
“Yes, good morning,” says John.
The man behind the counter says nothing more, tries to hold his smile.
John waits. Then:
“It’s your turn now, isn’t it?”
The other one blinks, confused.
“Sorry!” he says. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you the manager?”
A frown. He catches it quickly, but that smile is turning into a silent wince.
“Manager and owner.”
John doesn’t know whether to congratulate him or offer commiserations.
“My name’s John Ray. I’ve got a car showroom down on Hope Road. Tony Ray’s Motors? I don’t know, you might have heard of it?”
The manager loosens up, relief spreading across his face.
“Tony Ray’s place!” he says, nodding too much, extending an arm and shaking John’s hand with vigour. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. Adrian Fuller, by the way. Hope Street, that’s right, yes. Been there years!”
“You saw today’s Yorkshire Post, then?”
“No…” he says, making a show of looking around, “we don’t seem to have got the papers this morning.”
John also looks. The reception is in fact one corner of a far larger room, most of which is in semi-darkness. The reception counter extends right across the back wall, mutating part way along into a bar. In front of it is a spacious lounge, low-slung sofas in perfect order, plus a small breakfast station which appears not to be in use.
“Well, I’m sure you’re busy,” John says, surveying the emptiness, “so I’ll get straight to it. I’m looking for Owen Metcalfe. Big lad, blond, early twenties. Looks a bit like that cricketer, the one who was always getting drunk. Not Botham, the other one.”
Fuller is noncommittal, a slight shake of the head.
“I dunno. We get a lot of people in here…”
“Really?”
No reply this time.
“Owen Metcalfe. Everybody calls him Freddy. Always laughing, joking around. If you’ve met him, you’ll know. Tall as me, almost as wide.”
The man shrugs with vague apology.
“Look, I’ve just been dragged down to Millgarth about this. Freddy works for me, and he’s in trouble. So if you know where he is, that’d be grand. Heard the news this morning, have you?”
What little colour was in Fuller’s cheeks has now disappeared. But still he doesn’t speak.
“I assume that means something to you,” John continues. “And if it turns out Freddy was even near this place, there’s gonna be a fuck load of coppers spinning through that door the minute they find out. You’ll be doing yourself a favour if we can get to him first.”
“What news?”
The voice comes from behind Fuller.
A young man stands in the double doors, dull ginger hair, bad skin, a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt small on his wiry frame.
“Craig, what are you doing here?” Fuller asks.
Whatever Craig is doing, he looks badly in need of sleep.
“I got my shift times wrong,” Craig says, staring at the floor, his voice low, as if it pains him to say anything at all. “Thought I was on mornings.”
An awkward pause follows. Above them the strip lights emit their gentle hum.
“Mr Ray is looking for Freddy,” Fuller says in the end.
But he speaks without looking at Craig, who for his part continues to look down at the floor.
“A girl’s dead,” John says. “And Freddy’s disappeared.”
With my car.
“What did the police say?” Craig asks, screwing up his face in confusion.
“They said a lot of things. Bottom line, from me to you: has Freddy been here, or has he fucking not?”
The question is for Fuller, not Craig.
“I think,” the manager replies, “I’ll take my chances with the local constabulary, Mr Ray.”
His voice carries just the right amount of defiance. For a moment he looks proud of himself, surprised even. But it doesn’t last. He’s evidently in no state for a confrontation. John Ray, meanwhile, looks like the kind of man for whom confrontation is a singular pleasure.
A moment’s eye contact is all it takes.
“He was here yesterday,” Fuller says, his shoulders dropping as he gestures towards the end of the counter. “Come through to the office. Craig, can you watch the counter?”
They head down a carpeted corridor with numbered doors on each side. The last one on the left is ajar. A trolley loaded high with buckets and plastic containers waits outside, and the throaty drone of a vacuum comes from within.
Fuller’s office is opposite.
“Take a seat,” he says, pulling an orange plastic chair from the side of the room for John then sitting behind the desk in an identical chair.
He rests his elbows on the desk, presses his fingers together, then speaks.
“Freddy was here last night. The girl he w
as with is called Donna. The dead girl? Is it her?”
As he speaks he watches a black and white security monitor on his desk. The screen is split into four, but only three of the squares show images.
“What makes you say that?”
“She comes here to see two men. They’re staying here and she’s, well, she’s a prostitute.”
John notices the monitor. One image is a wide-angle shot of the reception and lounge. The boy in the T-shirt is making himself a coffee, moving so ponderously it looks as if he’s in slow-motion.
“Not a great thing for a hotel manager to admit,” Fuller adds, “but that’s the truth.” He looks at John, as if in apology. “A prostitute. What can I say?”
“Donna?” John says slowly. “So what happened yesterday?”
“Late evening, she came. In a bad way, drink, drugs… And angry. Pretty much trashed the room.”
“The one being cleaned now?”
“Yeah, number twelve. We had to ask her to leave.” He swallows. “In that state, I was, y’know, afraid something might have happened to her.”
“What’s Freddy’s role in all this?”
“He was with her when she left.”
Fuller sinks a little in the chair, as if the thought saddens him.
There’s a security camera pointing down the corridor. John watches the monitor as the door of room twelve opens and someone comes out, obscured by the trolley, then disappears back inside. Meanwhile, Craig sits in the reception, cradling a mug of coffee in both hands and hardly moving.
“So, Friday night and Freddy’s in a hotel room with a prostitute and a couple of other guys?”
“That’s right. I don’t know Freddy. I mean, I’ve no idea why he was here.”
“From what the police said, I think we can assume the dead girl is Donna.”
Fuller sighs, nods his head.
“Tell me about the two men.”
Fuller considers the question for a moment.
“Ukrainians. Agricultural machinery. They’ve been here six weeks. I give them a good rate. They use the hotel as their UK base. Yesterday they were celebrating a big contract, cigars, Champagne, the works. Whenever they celebrate, they call the girl.”
“But this time it turned out bad?”