by John Barlow
“This was my fifth.”
“Jesus Christ, John. Fifty cars? Two and a half million quids’ worth?” She shakes her head. “No, it’s not possible. The sellers…”
“I do a deal with the sellers. First I buy the car, pay cash. I get it safe, satellite tracking disabled, new plates, quick as possible. Then I ring the seller and explain that they’re holding fifty grand in fake notes. They’ve got a choice: either go to the police, have the notes confiscated, and take a risk telling the insurance company…”
“The insurance won’t pay out on…”
“Right. The alternative is they can report the car stolen. I tell ’em to say that while they were showing the car to me, someone else rang about the car. They nipped into another room, and when they came back I’d stolen the spare keys from the back of a kitchen drawer and taken the motor. They can even say it was my phone call. The number’ll be traced back to an anonymous mobile. I get a new phone for every shipment.”
For a while neither of them speaks. He takes a Nokia from his pocket and holds it up between finger and thumb like a court exhibit. And now his head begins to feel heavy and unmanageable. Four large whiskies and four pints and the effects are coming on good and hard. He wishes he were somewhere else with her, anywhere, just not here, of all places.
“You stood there,” she says in the end, “outside the station on Saturday. You stood there and you lied. You don’t think I had anything to do with this, that’s what you said to me, like you were offended that I even asked. You know, whenever I had even the slightest thought that perhaps you might be involved in something dodgy, I felt ashamed of myself. You made me believe your lies until I hated myself if I ever stopped believing them.”
“There was only one lie.”
“Oh, yeah? All the trips south to buy cars, the evenings away? Every one a lie. The showroom? Total lie. You. You’re a lie. And to top it all you were shagging a copper. The icing on the cake. You must’ve felt so bloody clever!”
The whisky is biting into his guts. He doesn’t feel clever. He feels like he’s run a pointless scam and it’s cost him the only person he cares about. He feels like an idiot.
“I only buy from rich people,” he says. “If they look like they’re in difficulties of any sort I walk away. These are expensive motors, the folk who drive ’em are savvy. You tell ’em they’ve no choice but to say the car was stolen, then you throw-in fifty grand in very high-quality fake notes to be spent judiciously? That’s cushioning the blow a bit.”
“So it’s charity work!”
“And I always make a withdrawal from the bank,” he continues, getting it all out now, “fifty grand, just in case anyone ever asks where I was last night, y’know, like you lot did on Saturday.”
“You’ve really thought of everything…” she says, staring out into the night. “How much do you make?”
“Not much. I renegotiated the price of the notes, but they still cost me twenty points. So if I buy a car for fifty grand, it costs me ten. And I sell it on for fifteen or sixteen. I make five or six grand per car.”
“Kids get that for nicking sports cars off the street. Why not sell the notes on, double your money?”
“Because this way it’s almost risk free. We get the car safe inside a container lorry then I call the seller back with the bad news. Until that point nobody’s reporting anything as stolen. No risk for me, or the buyers.”
“Who are?”
“I got a contact. Turns out it leads back to Lanny Bride. I never knew. The only person I see is a truck driver. Each night that I work I steal two motors, make about ten grand profit.”
“Export?”
“Never asked. A week’s work and fifty-odd k is deposited in an account of mine in Honduras.”
“And how long were you planning on doing this?”
“Five years.”
“That sounds very specific.”
“At this rate five more years is enough for a sixty-one foot motor yacht and running costs forever after. That’s my price, my out.”
He looks over his shoulder at the showroom, and the city beyond, then up at the sky, as if it might be of some help.
“I came back home to help Joe sell the showroom. Within a month he’s dead and Dad has his first stroke. That’s when it hit me. Twenty-five years I’d been away, the prodigal son who wanted to escape the life of crime. And I did. I left. Thing is, I never knew what to do once I’d gone.”
“The police?” she says. “That’s what you told me, or was that another lie?”
He snorts.
“For a while, yeah. That was going to be my life, the son who walked away from his criminal father to be a copper.”
“And?”
“Didn’t have the guts. Bottled it.”
“You had a career though.”
“Correction. I drifted. Taught English, worked in bars, short order cook, purser on a ferry for a while… At the age of thirty I trained as an accountant and a decade later I was making forty grand a year and spending most of it on food and wine. Then I met you.”
“Ha! So this is my fault?”
“You woke me up, Den. Made me look at myself. I was tired of the struggle to be an upright citizen, knowing that wherever I went someone would eventually find out who my dad was. Can you imagine what it’s like being an accountant, and having a dad like Tony Ray? I wanted to be free. Free of my name.”
He slumps sideways against the passenger door, as if he’s ashamed to tell her, even to face her.
“The sea,” he says. “To wake up on a yacht. Every morning. A yacht in the sun, bobbing on the tide, seagulls overhead. That is what I want. That’s all. Is it too much to ask?”
He screws up his face, stifling a yawn.
“I’m not even a very good accountant. Forty grand I was on. Dad’s nursing home costs more than that.”
“It’s more than I make.”
“It’s different for you. You’re doing something good. Least you think you are.”
“I thought you approved of the police?”
“I used to.” He runs a hand across his forehead, which is greasy with sweat. “But now? I don’t think anything does much good. This counterfeit thing came up, I didn’t go looking for it. But suddenly I could see the chance to escape for good.”
“A yacht? That’s it?”
“And what about you? Chasing down scum, finding bodies, knocking on the doors of parents with the bad news.”
“Making the world a decent place to live.”
“I grew up with criminals. They get caught. They get out. They get killed. Whatever. Nothing changes. But I know this: I was born in the wrong place. Everything we owned was off the back of a fucking lorry, Christmas presents, clothes, football boots. All I remember about my mum is being dragged around the markets checking on perfume sellers.”
“Opium,” Den says, as if to herself.
He doesn’t understand.
“Opium. She wore Opium. Donna Macken.”
“I know,” he whispers.
“What? John?”
He swallows down the acid bile in his throat.
“There’s a fake twenty note in Craig Bairstow’s flat.”
“Bairstow?”
“Lad from the hotel. He killed her.”
She shifts in her seat.
“How do you know?”
“Craig Bairstow had one of the notes Bilyk was peddling. I broke into his flat today and switched it for one of mine.”
“I don’t believe you. I just…”
“Makes no difference to Bairstow. Makes no difference to Bilyk. He’s long gone.”
“You’re no different from your dad, are you? Freedom? This isn’t about a yacht. You’re pathetic.”
The creases on his face shine with perspiration. He looks old, haggard. His hand is on the handle of the door.
“Dream of the Mediterranean? It was you that made me want it, Den. You dragged me back from the edge. I wanted it to be with you.”
H
e pauses, expecting a response. There isn’t one. His body droops a little, then he opens the door.
One foot on the pavement, but she’s not quite done.
“There’s something doesn’t make sense.”
“What?” he says, light-headed, relieved to have got it over with.
“Why leave your business card in the Mondeo if there’s counterfeits in the boot?”
He explodes, a mixture of laughter and a deep, throaty cough. His breath is foul, whisky and cigarettes and rotten guts.
“I forgot!” he says, struggling for air. “Friday afternoon, I took the last hundred grand from the boot. When I do that, I always put a card in the glove compartment, or something, a brochure, anything with a letterhead, to make the car legit. From then on the car is ours, we’re just a bit behind with the registration documents.
“So, I go down south on the train to buy two cars, but one of ’em wasn’t right. Back I come, dump fifty grand in the boot, and I’m in such a rush to see you that I forget about the bloody card. Because you’re the centre of my life. Because I love you. In all of this, it was just you. You weren’t my alibi, Den. Not for a single minute.”
Her eyes are swollen, but there’s no way he’s gonna see her cry, not now.
“But you’re a criminal,” she manages to say, her voice thin but steady.
“I’m the son of a criminal. The brother of a criminal. I get told that often enough.”
“Not by me. Not one time. Never. And what about this!”
She pulls the white envelope from her pocket.
“You gonna blame this on your dad! Two and a half million quids’ worth of cars?”
He smiles.
“Open it.”
“John, do I really have to…”
“Open it. Go on.”
“Then what,” she says, angrily tearing the envelope open, “are you gonna try and snatch it off me?”
She takes out a single sheet of paper.
There’s nothing on it.
“What the fuck?”
“Lanny was never gonna shop Tony Ray’s son. Not a chance. He was bluffing. He’s not as smart as he thinks. I’m the clever one, remember?”
She screws the paper up, lets it fall from her hands.
“You could’ve got away with this, John. The cars, the money. You’d got away with it all!”
He hauls himself out of the car, stands on the curb.
“I didn’t want to go on lying to you, Den. Because I love you.”
She starts the car.
“Don’t contact me again.”
“Den? I w…”
“I mean it.”
“You can have your own room if you like, on the boat?”
She laughs, and for a second she sees the man who she led back from the abyss, and who in turn made her life exciting and decadent and worth living. Who loved her, and who knew how to be loved.
He stands there, a smile on his face, as the car pulls away.
“It’s okay, Den,” he says to himself, “you can stop recording now.”
With that he returns to the bar of the Black Horse to await the arrival of the West Yorkshire constabulary.
***
She drives past Tony Ray’s Motors, trying not to look, and at the end of the road turns right onto Regent Street. The dark monster of Millgarth looms in her mirrors as she heads out of town, no idea where. She makes it a couple of miles, but she can’t see well enough to drive. Pulls up, arms across the wheel, and lets the worst of it come.
Her face smeared with tears and dribble, she reaches inside her jacket and untapes a tiny microphone. The wire runs through the lining of her pocket and is connected to a small, flat digital recorder there. She brings the recorder out, fiddling with it until it yields up a tiny blue plastic memory card.
Her fingers are wet and she can hardly see what she’s doing. The card springs from her fingers, falling to the floor. It takes her a while to find it, groping in the dark around her feet. Then she opens the door, drops it into the gutter, and grinds it with her heel until its blue plastic sides come apart and its delicate circuitry is revealed. She gets out of the car, scrapes up the fragments in a handful of wet grit, and looks for the nearest drain.
EPILOGUE
A glass of chilled fino sherry and a bowl of paprika-roasted peanuts. And to follow? Blade of beef with pumpkin seed and hazelnut risotto. He doesn’t know if it’s still on the menu, but that’s what he had the last time he was here, with Den.
A corner table at Anthony’s. But no Den this time. He’s always loved it here. Where else in Leeds could you get hazelnut risotto? Even the decor suits his mood, the muted cream and browns, the serious, high-backed chairs, no floral bullshit on the tables. The staff could shut the fuck up a bit, but isn’t that always the case?
Anthony’s is exactly where you want to eat when the rest of your life stretches out ahead of you like a blank canvas, and you don’t even know what you’re going to do with the rest of the day. Two bottle lunch? Minimum.
He hears her footsteps across the wooden floor. Looks up. There’s something different about her. No piercings in the nose, and the hair has been brought partly under control. She looks older, dressed in a sleek, dark brown trouser suit and a cream top.
“You match the restaurant!” he says as he rises to kiss her briefly on each cheek. “Looking good, by the way.”
“Gracias.”
The waiter is over in an instant.
“Fino?” John asks.
“Just water,” she tells the waiter. “I’ll have wine with the meal.”
They sit down, holding their smiles. It would be more awkward still if John hadn’t already taken the edge off his nerves with a G and T at home.
“So, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Been exercising?”
“A little. You? Is that, ehm, a bit of extra weight?”
He grins.
“Three weeks in France? This is the best I could do!”
After driving through France on his own, John has come home to face the reality of what he left behind. And he doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to do.
The water arrives.
“Could you just send over a bottle of whatever Albariño you’ve got?” John asks the waiter, who nods appreciatively as he turns to go.
They touch glasses.
“Salud!”
“You shouldn’t really do that with water.”
“It’s okay,” she says, “we can do it again when the wine comes.”
“Very pragmatic.”
“Me?” She takes a sip of water. “Yes, very.”
He finishes his sherry.
“Have you seen Freddy yet?” she asks.
“No. I just got back yesterday. Spoke to him though. Sounds like the whole world crashed around his ankles and it was all his fault.”
“He’ll be going inside, though?”
“Inside? You mean jail? I dunno. They charged him with conspiracy to pass fake currency. Couldn’t get him on possession, couldn’t get him on actually passing the stuff.”
“It’s his first offence,” she says. “And he’s admitted that he left some of the money in the boot of the car, isn’t that right…”
John watches as the sommelier approaches with the wine.
“Ah, Albariño!” he says, inspecting the label then watching as a little is poured into her glass.
“So what actually happened in the hotel room?” she asks, then tastes the wine.
His stare widens as he waits for their glasses to be filled and the sommelier to leave.
“Donna threatened the Ukrainians. Said she’d go to the police. She thought they’d paid her in fakes. But they hadn’t. They didn’t know anything about it. It was Fuller who paid her in fakes.”
“He’s been charged, right?”
“Right. But what could Freddy do, there in the hotel room? Fedir starts slapping her around, teach her a lesson. But it’s Freddy ag
ainst both the Ukrainians. And they’re nasty blokes. And big.”
“So he had to watch?”
“Fedir started to rape her. In the end Freddy couldn’t stand it. He pulled Fedir off her, persuaded him to go for a drink. He made sure Donna was all right, then followed the Ukrainians out so they wouldn’t suspect anything. He told her to get a taxi somewhere safe.”
“So he feels guilty that he didn’t protect her?”
“Yeah, but the thing is, he did.”
“And she died anyway,” Connie says. “At least they got the right person for her murder.”
“Craig? Yep, confession and everything. Cried like a baby, apparently.”
“He’s gonna plead accidental death, I heard.”
He savours the wine.
“What’s this? You developing an interest in British criminal law?”
“Law?” she says, swirling the golden yellow wine around in the glass then taking a delicate sniff. “The law’s important.”
She drinks, washes the Albariño around her mouth for a second, and swallows.
“And the car?” she asks.
“They pinned the notes on the amazing disappearing Ukrainians. And I think we shouldn’t mention any of this again.”
“Okay.”
She drinks more wine, taking her time to enjoy the taste of home.
“Are you hungry?” he asks as a waiter approaches with menus, “because I’m starving.”
They open the menus, relieved to have something other than the events of three weeks ago to talk about.
“Have you heard from Den?” she says, head in the menu.
“No. I’m afraid that’s over. Finished.”
“I have.”
“What?”
“Through a mutual friend.”
“Who?”
“Does that matter? She’s got a new job. Manchester.”
“Police?”
“Yes. She said, tell John all the best.”
All the best?
“Did she leave a number?”
She shakes her head.
“Have you decided what you’re having?” he asks.
Connie orders the scallop tartare. He has the same.
All the best.
Three weeks in France and that’s all he’s thought about. Den and him on a yacht, forever. Freedom. The only kind he wanted. Now it’s too late. Did he really think Den was going to stick around, knowing what she knew?