‘Who’re you?’ He wore no earrings or anything of that nature.
‘Army?’ Maiden wondered.
‘What of it?’ Scott looked ready to smash his face in and throw him in the river.
Ah, well. Maiden displayed his warrant card.
‘I’m not driving, squire,’ Scott said.
‘I’m not Traffic. Just want a word, that’s all.’
‘What’s this about?’ Scott looked worried, but not worried enough for it to be significant. Maiden led him to a bench above the riverbank.
‘Justin Sharpe. Mate of yours?’
‘Not specially. I know him.’
Maiden shook his head.
‘What’s he done?’ Scott said.
‘What do you think he
‘How would I know?’
‘You don’t work with him, then?’
‘Nobody works with him.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Cause he … cause he don’t employ anybody no more. Look-’
‘The word is you go out at night with him, on the piss.’
Scott closed his eyes briefly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just spell it out. What’s he done?’
Maiden waited. Scott breathed in, bit down on his bottom lip. A duck came over to check if they were eating sandwiches. Maiden leaned back on the bench, clasped his hands behind his head. What the hell was he getting into here?
It was about Vic Clutton, he concluded. He had this pent-up rage inside him. He was looking for a target. Any target.
Scott said, ‘If he’s in trouble, it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t need any trouble. Coming out the army in a few weeks.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I’m looking around.’ The lad smiled faintly, embarrassed. ‘Been thinking about the police, actually.’
‘Really.’ Maiden kept his face expressionless.
‘So you see the problem,’ Scott said.
‘Of having a mate like Justin?’
‘He’s not a mate really. He just latches on to you. Wants to go clubbing with you at weekends, down Gloucester, Cheltenham. You know?’
‘Wife and kids, though, hasn’t he?’
‘Sort of. Some of the time. What’s he done?’
‘What about women? Likes to put it about?’
‘You need me to tell you that? Mind, he talks a lot of bullshit — this totty, that totty. You don’t believe half of it. Like the other day, he reckoned he picked up this American tart, like a hippy type, and she’s all over him, and so he give her one in the grass round the back of the garage. That’s Justin.’
‘I see.’
‘Man, you must know what he’s like or you wouldn’t be asking. Old feller died, left him these garages and he flogged the other for a building site, but the council wouldn’t give him planning permission for this one so he’s letting it go to rack and ruin, deliberate eyesore. While he spends the money he got from the other place.’
Maiden nodded. It was what the old man with the bicycle had told him.
‘Now he thinks he’s this big man. Likes to hang out. In Gloucester and places. Gives you all these stories. How he used to go round Cromwell Street and shag Rose West when Fred was out fitting somebody’s bathroom. All this shit you know he’s made up. And how he’s got all these hard friends.’
‘How hard?’
‘Got to be harder than Justin. Comes over tough, but you lean on him, he’ll fall over.’ Scott stood up. ‘Look, I said enough, all right? He ain’t a mate, but I ain’t a copper yet, neither.’
Maiden stood up. ‘Good luck then, Scott,’ he said. ‘Might see you around.’
Again, behind the screen of conifers it was a different world, a different season — the old petrol pumps sad sentries under the white sky. The only colours were the oily rainbows in the old puddles which defined the forecourt’s cracks and hollows. There was no car outside, no truck, only the sombre remains of a disembowelled van at the side of the garage.
Behind the grey building, a fence of corrugated metal sheets divided the garage from a field.
Lying bastard. Hopefully.
Maiden shouted, ‘Justin!’
A crow flew up, protesting, from behind the building. He tried the doors.
One opened a few inches. A padlock fell from a hasp. Maiden widened the gap enough to squeeze through.
Inside, the garage was cobwebbed and derelict, the concrete floor slippery with old grease. Rags of grey light trailed from slimed-up, cobwebbed skylights.
‘Oh hell,’ Maiden said.
He’d smelled the smell.
There were two vehicles in here, an ancient VW Beetle and a red Mini. Maiden walked around the Mini.
It had an exhaust pipe but not a new one. Maiden bent down and saw that the silencer was held in place by a length of wire, wound round twice. Justin had failed to obtain a new system — or hadn’t even tried — and had simply tied the old pipe back the way it had been before it fell off.
His shoes sliding on a grease slick, Maiden walked over to some workbenches. Under dusty grey drapes of light dangling from the roof-panes, he saw the tools on the workbench gleaming blue. Very few of them, spanners and stuff, nothing as sophisticated as welding equipment.
Justin must have sold most of the gear. There was about enough here to change a wheel and that was it. Yet he was still leaving cards in phone boxes in rural areas. A way of picking up women?
Maiden went back to the car, tried the door. It opened. The key was in the ignition. He looked over into the back and on the floor. He took out the key and opened the boot. Spare tyre, tools, three copies of
He switched off. Went over and put his shoulder against the garage door and opened it wide. No need for both doors to get a Mini out of here.
He took some breaths of fresh air, then he went back into the garage.
With the door open, white light fanned through cobwebs dotted with mummified flies. It lit up the old Volkswagen and the splayed fingers in the grease.
‘Maiden? Is that you? Where are you?’
‘I’m in the car park of a roadside diner. Marcus, is Grayle there?’
‘Did you get the car?’
‘Yes, I’m in the car now. If you could just put Grayle on.’
‘Excellent.
‘Well, we can talk about that.’
‘What’s that supposed to …? Yes, it’s Maiden … hold on a second.’
‘Bobby?’
‘Hello, Grayle.’
‘You got the car?’
‘Yes, I-’
‘You saw him? You saw Justin?’
‘Grayle, what does Justin look like, exactly?’
