by Sean Dexter
But she didn't go as far as Stoke, instead turning off into Alsager, a small town whose commerce had recently been hit by the closure of the college campus. We went into the town centre and she signalled left at traffic lights, eventually turning into one of the housing estates that had been built in the fifties to cater for the expanding workforce of the weapons factory at Radway Green.
I parked a hundred yards down the road and watched as she climbed out, pulled down her skirt, glanced around, then went up the drive of a modern house and knocked on the door with the knuckles of her delicate right hand. Even from where I was watching I could see that she was slender and shapely and carried herself with the poise of the dancer that she'd once been. Richie Downes could break her like a twig.
In the driveway sat a Porsche Boxter. I doubted Emily Downes was visiting her maiden aunt. Not in those shoes, anyway.
*****
An hour and a half later, the door opened and Emily Downes came out of the house, trotted—there's no other word for it—down the driveway and climbed into her Alfa. I let her go and waited.
Twenty minutes later, perhaps enough time for a quick shower, a slender man of about forty slipped out of the door and got into the Porsche. He looked to have about ten years on Richie Downes but was six inches shorter and several pounds lighter. Not an even contest. I remembered again why I disliked divorce work.
The Porsche reversed out of the drive and then drove away from me. I started the Mondeo and followed discreetly as he wound his way through the suburban streets, littered with pink cherry blossom, and then hit the main road out of Alsager towards Crewe.
As I followed him into the Cheshire countryside I considered the dilemma I'd put myself in. I'd taken the work, sure enough, but I didn't feel good about it. I'm not one to moralise at the best of times, so it was hard to act as though I had a moral agenda by giving Richie Downes information about his vow-breaking wife. On the other hand, I had a cheque in my desk drawer covering five days' work at £800 a day. That would pay office rent for a few months and put bread—all right, mostly curry—on my table. Did I have the wiggle room to give the cheque back and say Thanks but No Thanks?
We entered Crewe the back way, over the railway bridge by the retail park, turning right towards the traffic lights below Asda. Then a left up towards West Street and I began to experience a sinking feeling.
West Street is a long thoroughfare that heads out of Crewe down towards a junction with another road that leads into Nantwich. It's an old street that housed workers on the railways when rolling-stock was built there, and also workers from Rolls-Royce before it was taken over by BMW. Narrow streets lead off it, and it was down one of these that the Porsche eventually turned. Almost immediately on our right we passed the open maw of Downes Motors, two bays containing hydraulic lifts, one of which was raised high with a blue-overalled worker beneath an old Peugeot, looking up. We travelled two hundred yards down the street and the Porsche slowed, finally pulling into a marked parking bay in the forecourt of another garage, Finnegan's Repairs. Another two bays with hydraulic lifts, both of these raised. There was more activity here, with several men in overalls buzzing around looking at the cars raised on the lifts and a couple of others talking to customers.
The Porsche driver got out, waved a greeting at one of the men, then entered the building through what was obviously an office door. A few minutes later he came out, now in shirt-sleeves, and started moving amongst the men, shaking hands with the customers, inspecting the work being carried out on the cars. The owner or the manager, evidently.
I waited for him to go back into the office then crossed the road and hung around until one of the mechanics spotted me and walked over. He had a small head and grizzled skin, as though bits of metal filings had seeped into it over the years and coarsened its texture.
'Help you, mate?'
'Depends,' I said.
'On what?'
'Price. I need new brake pads on that Mondeo over there.'
'All right.'
'But there's another garage down the way—Downes Motors?'
'Never noticed them.'
'Right. So who's cheaper—you or them?'
'We're always cheaper, mate. Do you want me to fetch the boss? He'll give you a price.'
'That's OK. Must be tough, having competition so close.'
'Not so's you'd notice. We're doing all right, this economy.'
'So I see. I'll get back to you, do some pricing.'
'Suit yourself.'
He wandered off. I went back to my car, but not before I'd seen the owner—Mr Finnegan?—looking at me through the large office window.
*****
My girlfriend of two years had left a few months previously, so I wasn't expecting a knock at my door at nine o'clock that night. I looked through the spy-hole and was surprised and intrigued enough to open up.
'Mrs Downes.'
'So you're not even going to feign ignorance?'
'What's the point? Come in and we can argue in private.'
My house is a little outside of Crewe and down a small lane, away from the main road and any other houses that might overlook me. She glanced back up the road, as though she might see a comforting light, then drew a deep breath and stepped through the door. If her husband was big in stature, she was tall and solidly made, as though two rugged specimens had sought each other out on the basis of physical compatibility. As she walked past me she gave off a deeply sensual odour. The hair that had been perched on the top of her head earlier that day was now down to her shoulders and she wore form-fitting navy-blue pants beneath a cream blouse. Her toes peeked out of strappy shoes, their nails painted a surprisingly deep turquoise. I was shocked by the effect her physicality had on me but understood why two men were apparently competing for her attentions.
We went through into my lounge and I sat on a chair while she sat on the facing sofa, a low wooden table between us. She refused my offer of a drink curtly, then leaned back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
I said, 'How did you find me?'
Her head came down. 'You park outside my house all day, I'm going to notice. And I'm married to one motor dealer while seeing another. If I want to trace a car registration, I can.'
'I could have had revolving number plates, like James Bond.'
'But you didn't, and here we are.'
'So what are we going to do?'
'I thought it was a case of what are you going to do,' she said. 'Looking around this place I can see you need the money, so I'm not surprised. I just wonder whether you know the whole story.'
'That's what I was afraid of.'
'What?'
'That you'd have a part of the story I don't have. Some extenuating circumstances. You should know, Mrs Downes, that I don't usually take on this kind of work. Setting one partner against another isn't something I'm comfortable with.'
If she hadn't been well-bred, I think she would have snorted. She limited herself to rolling her eyes instead.
'Where are you from?' she asked. 'I mean, originally.'
'Yorkshire. Small town you wouldn't have heard of.'
'Oh, I've heard of more than you'd expect.'
'Why did you ask?'
'You seem to be pretending to very high moral standards for someone in your line of work. I just wondered where they came from. Was there a vicar in your northern family? A hell-fire Baptist preacher or something?'
'My dad was a miner. He knew the difference between good and bad behaviour. I must have learned something. And you don't have to be sarcastic or ironic or whatever it is you think you're doing. You don't have any moral high ground here.'
'I'll have that drink now, if you don't mind. Whisky or vodka. I need it.'
I rummaged in my 'drinks cabinet' and found half a bottle of Glenlivet that a client had given me two years before. I poured her half an inch and held it towards her.
'Double it with water,' she said, and I went to the kitchen and did so.
When I came back, she'd taken off her shoes and was massaging one foot.
She took the glass and sipped, then held the glass to the light. 'You are surprising, aren't you?'
'When all the flattery's done, what are you here for, Mrs Downes?'
'I'd ask you to call me Emily, but I know you wouldn't. You're a professional snooper so you have to keep a distance. So, what am I here for? I suppose Richie asked you to find out who I'm seeing, didn't he?'
I nodded.
'What if I were to tell you, Mr Dyke, that he knew all along who it was.'
'I would use my “surprised” expression and say, “Why on earth would he do that?”'
'Exactly. Why on earth. But then I suppose you think this is the same old story—bored married woman has affair with exciting Other Man. Husband finds out and threatens wife with divorce and Other Man with violence.'
'But it's not.'
'Indeed not. Richie has known about Arthur for eighteen months.'
'Arthur?'
'I know. Calls himself Artie when he introduces himself, but everyone calls him Arthur anyway. Did you hear what I said?'
'That your husband has known that you were sleeping with someone else for eighteen months. So why has he only just asked me—or someone like me—to track him down?'
'That's the question, isn't it?'
'And do you have an answer?'
'I do, but I need to know what you're going to do with all the information you have before I give it to you.'
Now it was my turn to draw a deep breath. It had been an entertaining conversation—not to say enlightening—but it hadn't changed the fundamental trajectory of the case. I'd been paid solid money to perform a task, which I'd done. Whatever Emily Downes had to say, whatever new information she laid on the table, it wasn't going to alter the nature of the contract between me and Richie Downes.
I told his wife that and she made one of those strange shapes with her mouth that was supposed to demonstrate disappointment and sadness, a slight turn-down of the outside of her lips.
'All this time,' she said, 'and Richie didn't seem to care. He let me know that he knew about Arthur in January of last year, but he didn't mention it again and didn't even threaten me, or Arthur. I thought he'd given up on me, but liked having me around, you know?'
I massaged her ego by saying, 'Yes, I can see that.'
'So there must be something else going on to make him talk to you.'
'He said he's not going to threaten you or Arthur. There might not even be a divorce in the offing.'
'Strange, isn't it? But I think I've worked out why he's doing it.'
'And are you going to tell me?'
She laid her empty glass on the table between us.
'Yes, I think I'm just drunk enough now to do it.'
So she did.
*****
My life is so exciting because I never know what to expect next.
But I should have expected the goons to turn up, because those are the kind of people who seem to follow me around.
It was the morning after Emily Downes' visit and I got up early to drive to my office. The sky was clear and without a cloud, so it all happened in a daylight that was very much broad.
I close and lock my front door, relishing the woody tang in the air, turn towards my car … and sense more than hear a movement. One of those movements that you can tell is fast and heading your way, like when you know something's about to fall on your head.
My right arm came up and took the impact of a metal bar that was aimed at my cranium. It hurt like hell but didn't break my wrist.
And then another noise, from the opposite direction, this time accompanied by a grunt as someone tried to inject force into a kick. I saw it at the last moment and twisted my hip so that it caught me on the back of my thigh instead of a more sensitive area.
Okay, I thought, game on.
My right arm, though bruised, knew the direction that the first blow had come from and almost by itself calculated the length of the arm that had thrown it, the angle where it attached to a shoulder and therefore where a head might be. It lashed out with a curled fist and there was a satisfyingly soft thump as my knuckles hit a cheek. A cheek that was covered with wool. So balaclavas were in play.
I still hadn't had a chance to turn and look at my assailants, but I had an idea of their size, weight and mass, so planted my weight and turned towards the man who'd tried to castrate me without the aid of chemicals. In the split-second that had taken place so far, he'd also repositioned his weight and I glimpsed the knurled head of a long tool, perhaps a wrench. My spinning brain thought: a Clue. While it was spinning I took the initiative and leaned forward so that I was within his arm-swing radius and jabbed out my left hand. Another satisfying crunch.
The Battle of My Drive was turning my way. These guys wore the dress of pros, but didn't have the aptitude for it.
I turned back to the one who'd tried to brain me, who was now standing off a little with one hand over the place on the balaclava where his nose would be. He was breathing heavily, his eyes in their little woolen holes glancing towards his mate.
I stepped backwards so that they were both in front of me, their arms half-raised, their weapons half-cocked.
They thought I was just going to look at them, but I swiftly moved towards the one with the tool, popped him on the nose again and twisted the tool from his hand.
'Go!' I shouted at them.
And they did, running down my drive and towards the break in the hedge, around which I suspected they had parked their car.
Now my forearm began to hurt and the real adrenaline began to pump in surges through my body. It was released in a huge grin that I directed at my front door, which didn't reply.
*****
Interestingly, the mechanic at Finnegan's Repairs whom I'd spoken to the day before had a bit of a shiner when I saw him in the pit that afternoon. He watched through narrowed eyes as I entered the dark cavern of the garage, echoing with the sudden parps of hydraulic bolt-tighteners, then turned back to the underside of an old Mercedes that it appeared he was trying to weld together, possibly by using the intensity of his gaze.
Nobody else gave me the same amount of attention so I assumed his colleague of that morning wasn't around. I hoped he was home nursing a bruised ego.
Through the broad office window, Arthur was standing there as he had been the day before. Perhaps he was shocked to see me. Perhaps he was stoic in the recognition that I was too good for his amateur goons. He raised his chin briefly towards me and I took it as an invitation.
By the time I'd walked around to the door, pushed it open and closed it behind me, he was seated behind his desk. An in-tray, an out-tray. All the garage's profits were compiled as sundry documents made the three feet transition from one tray to its companion, one side of the desk to the other. He waved towards the seat that faced him and I sat down.
Close up, he wasn't as smooth as he'd appeared when leaving the house in Alsager and climbing into his Porsche. Yes, he was younger than Richie Downes, but his eyes were too close together, his nose a fraction too long, his build slight but in a bony way. The only element of his make-up that gave him any presence was his clothing, which seemed classy and carefully put-together—close-fitting striped shirt, silk tie, well-cut pants and suit-jacket that had an expensive sheen. Part of me wished that if Emily Downes was going to have an affair she could at least have had one with someone approximate to her own sexual allure.
But that, of course, assumed she had a lot of choice in the circles in which she and her car-repairing husband moved.
I raised my hand and deposited the knurled metal tool on his desk with a heavy clunk. I didn't know what it was but I guessed he did.
He looked at it briefly, then said, 'We wondered where that had gone, chief. Where did you find it?'
'It was nearly buried in the back of my head.'
'Really? That would have been clumsy of you.'
He had a li
ght voice that didn't work well at carrying any threat or menace, and he acted as though he knew it. He had been leaning forward and now he leaned back, placing his hands on the arms of his chair. He thought he was assuming a masterful position, one he would take with a slacking mechanic, perhaps, or a female customer who hadn't realised how expensive an oil change would be. In fact he looked slightly pathetic, enacting a role he didn't have the skill to carry off.
I said, 'No games now, Arthur. We both know what went on this morning, but I just want to know why. Emily Downes came to see me last night so I don't understand— '
He sat up abruptly. 'She came to see you? What did she say?'
'She didn't deny anything, if that's what you mean.'
'Did she mention …'
'What?'
He glanced away, through the panoramic window on to the garage floor. A little muscle worked under his jawline.
'Did she mention my wife?'
My turn to sit back. We were both sitting back, like a couple of men at ease with the world around us. Though it wasn't true in either case.
'No, she didn't mention your wife. We barely talked about you at all. You see, Arthur, this business isn't about you, at least in an emotional way. Or even a sexual way, in the end.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Richie Downes is so caught up in himself that he can barely spare a thought for anyone else. But you probably knew that, didn't you? You'll have met him at various local business meetings, the chamber of commerce, crime stoppers, that kind of thing. You would have got to know him quite well. And he'd have got to know you.'
'He's a hateful bastard, always throwing his weight around. He sits in these meetings as though he's got somewhere more important to go, then tells us all what we should do. Nobody likes him but they're all scared of him.'
'No doubt. But it was the usual story, wasn't it? His wife was looking for some excitement while hubby was at work, and you and your Porsche fitted the bill.'