Hope Road (12 page)

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m expecting a visit from Laurel and Hardcase. Is it just me or is Steele a tosser?”

“Bloody good copper, I know that much.”

“Don’t want to get on his bad side, that sort of thing…”

“Messers Bilyk and Boyko,” she says. “Interested? Or do you just want to go on insulting the police?”

“I’m interested.”

“The Galey Tractor Company exists. Looks like Bilyk’s business is real. He’s had some sales in the area, the last few weeks. Cut price tractors, big discounts. The orders seem to be genuine, from what I’ve been able to find out.”

“So he’s legit?”

“Look, I did a bit of phoning around,
way
off the record, and Bilyk does all the selling. It’s a one-man show.”

“What about his partner, the young one?”

“No one mentioned him, nobody who ordered a tractor from Bilyk.”

“And has he turned up yet?”

“The young one? Nope. They’ve had Bilyk in for questioning most of the day. The other guy’s disappeared.”

He mulls this over for a second.

“Any chance I could have the names of the people who’ve bought tractors?”

“No way. Look, if there’s anything dodgy, CID’ll find it.”

He sighs down the phone.

“Why are you so interested in the Ukrainians anyway?” she says. “What about Freddy?”

“Is there any news?”

“He’s a mess. That’s the news. You know he punched Baron?”

“Yep. At least there’s that, then!”

“It’s not funny, John. He’s sitting there in a cell in Millgarth waiting to be charged. He’s got no defence.”

“And why isn’t that young Ukrainian guy the prime suspect? Because he’s disappeared? What is it with you lot, you just take the first available person and leave it at that?”

“Fuck you. CID are doing their job. If you’re so sure he’s innocent how about you start using that old family influence of yours, drag up some useful info? Because as of now, Freddy’s up shit creek. Way fucking up.”

“You don’t believe he did it, do you?”

“Course I don’t. That’s not the point, though.”

“Will you still help me?”

She exhales, takes her time.

“Depends. You can ask.”

“I will.”

A pause.

“John?” she says. “The money in the Mondeo was fake.”

“Yes, Baron kind of told me.”

While he was trying to trip me up.

“That stuff with your dad, y’know, people have long memories…”

“I know.”

Steele’s face is close up to the intercom, magnifying his nose and making him look like a greenish-grey elephant man. Behind him Baron stands, arms crossed.

John buzzes them in and throws the apartment door open. Then he gets the wine, uncorks it, and sits the bottle in an aluminium cooler. That makes him feel better.

They appear in the doorway and stop, their eyes drawn to the great Victorian triptych directly across from them, three huge windows glowing a deep, red-flecked orange as the last flames of day burn themselves out.

“Please, come in,” John says, as he sets three tall-stemmed glasses on the wooden-topped kitchen island in the centre of the kitchenette. “I’m assuming in CID you don’t do that
not on duty
stuff.”

“You should know,” Steele says. “I’ll have one.”

“I’m fine,” says Baron.

There’s now some reddening on his left cheek just below the eye, the skin shiny.

John pours two glasses and hands one to Steele, who sips and nods appreciatively.

“Nice,” he says.

John takes a sip.

“Mmm… almonds, notes of sweet grass.”

“A good year, is it?” says Baron, rolling his eyes with contempt.

“Well, y’know, it’s a fresh
Manchego
. Tends to be drunk young.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll take a look around, if that’s all right,” Steele says. “Place looks a bit sparse. Someone just move out?”

He wanders down one side of the room, stopping to squint at pictures of yachts, thumbing through piles of magazines, reading the titles of books.

“Used Car Dealer of the Year,” says Baron, seeing the perspex award over by the sink, next to it the two crystal whisky tumblers.

“Yorkshire region.”

“Modesty accepted. Why you? A car’s a car, isn’t it?”

“Demographics. I sell to a lot of professionals. Junior doctors, solicitors, accountants, civil servants over at Quarry Hill, teachers, lecturers…”

“That’s your secret?”

“That’s who I target. People who need decent wheels but still want to go secondhand. I sell ’em a car for a fair price, and if it goes wrong I fix it, no argument.”

“You really do that?”

“I really do. And when someone gets that kind of service, the whole office hears about it. An honest secondhand car salesman? It’s a story in itself. Professionals are also more likely to be from out of town. They don’t know who my dad was, back in the day. I do a lot of trade with the newly-arrived.”

Baron nods as he listens. He’s more subdued now. If John didn’t know better he might think the Inspector was making amends for earlier in the day, or keeping him sweet, given that so far today both the crime scene and prime suspect have come from him. He does know better though. It’s like the music in the background.
Birth of the Cool
sounds relaxed, spontaneous. But it was all planned in advance, scored out, note for note, like a symphony. Baron and his sidekick are playing their parts too. Only they’re not doing it as well as Miles Davis.

“There it is,” John says, indicating a small wooden chest on the kitchen island. “You want to…?”

“I only need to see it, I don’t need to find it myself.”

“Okay.”

John opens the box, takes out a half baguette, then retrieves five white envelopes,
Barclays Bank
printed in the corner. Each envelope is the size and shape of a small brick. He empties one of them onto the work top. Ten thin bundles of twenty pound notes, each bundle with a red paper band around it.

“There’s ten bundles of a thousand in each. Five envelopes.”

“When did you make the withdrawal?”

“Monday morning, first thing. Barclays, Headrow branch. I always give ’em plenty of notice.”

Baron can’t help but stare at the money. Near enough his gross annual salary. Although, after tax, National Security, police pension, maintenance for his wife and the twins, plus the lion’s share of their prep school fees, he’s left with about a third of it for himself, just about enough for one of John Ray’s better secondhand models.

“Do you mind?” he says, before carefully pulling a note out from the top bundle and examining it for authenticity.

John reaches for his cigarettes and watches, wondering if Baron really knows what he’s doing.

When the lighter clicks, Baron’s head snaps up.

“Sorry,” John says, pushing the packet towards him as he exhales.

“No, I don’t.” Baron returns his attention to the note in his hands. “It’s a lot of money, fifty k.”

“Not when you buy Porsches, it’s not.”

“Do a lot of that, do you?”

“Porsches? Hardly ever, as it happens. Middle executive down to tidy runabouts, that’s my stock in trade. Beemers to Golfs.”

“The Porsche just a whim then?”

“Something like that.”

“Why go all the way to Peterborough?”

“It was a GT3, you know, not a Boxster.”

“There were several very similar cars for sale within a thirty mile radius of here,” Baron says, still examining the banknote.

“Were there?”

“Five minutes on the Internet this afternoon, we found three. Same age, same kind of price. You haven’t been to see any of them.”

“Like I said this morning, when you spend that kind of money it’s all about instinct.”

“That’s why you didn’t buy it, instinct?”

“Yes.”

He hands John the note.

“The seller was a woman.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Said you took one look at her and did a runner.”

“I saw a situation, I saw a very expensive car, and I made a decision.
Blink
. You read that book? Instant decisions are often good ones.”

“Young mother, possible financial difficulties. Why would that bother you? This morning you said if they’ve got money problems you can beat ’em down on price.”

“I made a snap decision. I didn’t know any facts about her. That’s how I work.”

“You knew there was still some money owing on the car. Could have done her a favour buying it.”

“Not my job, Inspector.”

“He died.”

“What?”

“The husband. Three weeks ago. Fit as a fiddle. Massive heart attack. Go figure.”

“Jesus.”

“She’s stuck with a huge mortgage, four kids, and no income. The Porsche is all she’s got left. And she even owes money on that.”

He closes his eyes. Shame, pity, regret, the normal human response…

Shit, thank God I didn’t buy it.

Steele is over by the windows, transfixed by the stratified colours of the deepening sunset. It’s as if the sky’s been tie-dyed by Hare Krishnas. He wants to stay there and watch as it turns by degrees darker, until nothing remains but the immensity of the blackened night. And the bloody tinkling trumpet jazz that Ray’s got on in the background is getting on his tits.

He turns and looks at the two other men, then at the wall of the kitchenette behind them.

“A-ha, the roll calls,” says John. “When they converted the building I asked if I could have them. Headmasters, Head Boys, Head Girls, House Captains, two World Wars. Potted school history, a whole century’s worth.”

“And of course your name’s up there,” Steele says.

John scans the oak boards, finds his name in small gold letters.

“Head boy,” Steele says as he walks towards the kitchenette, the night sky burning down slowly behind him. “Then Cambridge University. Clever bloke!”

“If you say so.”

“It’s no biggie though is it, Mr Ray? You? You’re all modesty, aren’t you!”

He stops a couple of paces short of them.

“But come to think of it, you’ve got them boards right where you can see ’em while you’re having your Frosties of a morning? And over there, your
first-class
degree in a frame, next to your Cambridge class photo and your
master’s
degree. They’re up on the bloody walls an’all. Everything. I’d say you were as proud as fucking punch.”

Baron is not smiling, but he’s enjoying it. DC Matthew Steele, CID’s very own bullmastiff.

“Thing is, Mr Ray,” Steele says, his Yorkshire accent getting a little thicker as the tirade continues, “the
degrees
and what-not? It’s true. You’re a clever bloke. And what I’m asking myself is, why does a clever bloke like you go off on a two hundred mile round trip late on a Friday afternoon, worst possible time to travel, to
not
buy a Porsche? Money’s all here, traceable back to the bank. Nicely done. Cover your tracks. But you don’t
sell
Porsches, do you, Mr Ray? And definitely not GT3s.”

He exhales in mock exasperation.

“I dunno, but to me you’re looking
very
dodgy for yesterday afternoon. Then you drag your copper girlfriend out as an alibi for the night, the whole night. Breakfast time today and there’s a dead body in one of your motors, plus exactly fifty grand’s worth of snide notes.”

Another pause, Steele’s exasperation now extravagantly hammed up.

“A dead body and a stash of fake money, Mr John Ray?
My
instinct tells me you’re going down for at least one of ’em.
Blink
!”

“Thanks for your time,” says Baron, perhaps just slightly embarrassed that he’s enjoyed the last few minutes so much. “We’ll be in touch.”

They move quickly to the door, Steele first.

“Prick!” he whispers, loud enough for John to hear, as he steps out into the corridor.

With that they’re gone.

John squeezes his eyes closed. Steele’s verbal onslaught, however overblown, has unsettled him. The hatred, the contempt in his voice…

He marches over to the door and pulls it open. They’re already at the end of the corridor, just about to take the stairs.

“It was for me!” he bellows.

They stop, look back.

“The Porsche was for
me
! I was buying it for myself.
Prick
!”

He slams the door shut.

All right, I shouldn’t have called him a prick.

He pours his wine down the sink, corks the bottle and puts it in the fridge. It costs him fourteen euros a crate. Stocks up on it whenever he takes the ferry to Spain. Great for cooking.

T
he afternoon crowd in the Templars is thinning out, old fellas sipping the last of their scotch and shuffling off home for a night in front of the telly, their places taken by lads in short-sleeved shirts and too much aftershave, early doors for a tank-up before they hit the trendier bars of the city centre. Millgarth’s only a couple of blocks away, but there are no coppers in here that John recognises. A total of seven TV screens high up on the walls are showing live rugby league and highlights from the day’s racing at Doncaster, and the place is way too noisy.

Henry Moran scans the room, sees John, and joins him at the bar.

“You want one?” John asks, moving his head closer to Moran’s to make himself heard.

“No.” Moran rubs his fingertips into his forehead, closes his eyes for a second. “They haven’t charged him with anything yet.”

“And how is he?”

“Calmed down a bit, but he’s got no story on the girl. She was still alive when he left the hotel room. That is his defence.”

“Maybe it’s the truth.”

“Armley Jail’s full of people who told the truth. Another thing, they keep going back to the money in the car.”

“Snide.”

“What?”

“It was counterfeit. High quality. Very high. That’s what Baron wanted me for this afternoon. Sorry, I should have told you.”

A
whooshing
sound as Moran sucks air in through his teeth.

“Discussing evidence with you? Jeez, that’s not like Steve. What’s going on with you two?”

“Nothing.”