parents from their bed to pay the fare didn’t appeal to her.
An apparent knight in shining armour appeared on the scene and after a few dances offered her a lift home, which she gratefully accepted. Except he didn’t take her home. He drove almost thirty miles to a deserted place called Black Heath, on Salisbury plain, and dragged her from the car.
Eileen put up a fight and escaped. He chased her, but some headlights appeared and her attacker changed his mind and fled, leaving her to walk two miles down a dirt track in her stocking feet. She survived, and he graduated to the next level of his apprenticeship. He was on a learning curve.
The description she gave was fairly non-committal. It’s broad terms certainly included Silkstone, who would have been twenty-five at the time, but it could equally have been anyone that you see at a football match or leaning on a bar. She was certain about the car, though: it was Jaguar.
“Bad news,” Bob said, placing a sheet of paper in front of me. “Anthony Silkstone owned a Mk II Jag from September ’76 to December ’78, which is over two years too early for us.”
“Bugger!” I exclaimed.
“Steady,” Bob protested, “I’m a Methodist.”
“Well sod and damn, too.”
“Maybe…” Bob began.
“Go on.”
“He’d be what, in his early twenties?”
“When Eileen was attacked? Twenty-five, maybe twenty-six.”
“But he’d only be…what, twenty-one…when he bought the Jag?”
“That’s right.”
“A bit young, I’d say, for a car like that, expensive to run. Maybe he couldn’t afford it, and sold it to a friend, Latham perhaps, but still had access to it. And if you were up to mischief it would make sense to use somebody else’s car, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m just a simple Yorkshire lad. Find out what happened to it, Bob, please. He may even have traded it in for another Jag. We need a rundown of every car he and Latham have owned, and a full history of the Jag after he sold it. Let’s see if we can get some justice for Eileen, we owe her that much.”
I carried on with the file. Poor Eileen had been taken and seated in the passenger seat of every model that Jaguar, formerly Swallow Sidecars, had made. They changed their name at the outbreak of World War II, because SS, the abbreviated form, wasn’t good PR in 1939. Eileen couldn’t identify the actual model, but was adamant it was a Jag because it had the famous mascot on the bonnet and when she was little she’d seen a Walt Disney film about the animal.
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair. We were in the main CID office, but the place was deserted on a Saturday afternoon. I’d thanked Bob for his consideration but told him that I’d prefer to go home if we finished at a reasonable hour. Staying overnight would take another big chunk out of the weekend. Barber’s Adagio is one of those tunes that I can hear in my head but can’t reproduce with a whistle or hum. I imagined it now, with its long mournful descants and soaring chords. I saw a car, a Jag, revolving on a plinth. First it was sideways on, sleek and elegant; then it slowly turned to three-quarter view, radiating power and aggression with its rounded air intake and fat tyres; and then nose on, looking like it was coming at you from the barrel of a gun. People fall in love with their Jags, and I could understand why. Parting with it must have broken Silkstone’s heart.
I collected Bob’s mug and made us another coffee. He was talking on the phone and scribbling on a pad. I placed the replenished mug on his beer mat and tried to make sense of his notes.
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll come back to you shortly.”
He pushed himself back and turned to me, throwing his pencil on the desk. “According to Swansea the Jag was written off,” Bob told me. “After that he owned an MGB, presumably bought with the proceeds, but three years later that was written off, too.”
“Writing off one sports car is unfortunate,” I said. “Writing off two is downright careless. So he had an MGB at the time of the Eileen Kelly attack?”
“That’s right.”
“According to the file she was shown and seated in every Jag produced, but couldn’t recognise the precise model. I wonder if she was shown an MGB?”
“I don’t know,” Bob replied, “but we’ll be on to it, first thing Monday.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“We’ll find her.”
I pulled a chair closer to Bob’s desk and took a sip of coffee. He shoved a sheet of paper towards me, to stand my mug on. “I used to have a Jaguar,” I began. “An E-type. My dad restored it and it came to me when he died. It was a fabulous car, but wasted on me. I like one that starts first time, and that’s about it. We used to go to rallies, and I was amazed at the attention and devotion that some owners lavished on their vehicles. Love isn’t too strong a word.” I paused, remembering those good days, some of the best I’d ever had. “Imagine, if you can,” I continued, “that you are in your early twenties and you own your dream car. It’s fast and desirable, it turns heads and it pulls birds. What more could a young lad want? Then, one day, you write it off. It’s beyond repair, a heap of scrap. What would you do?”
“Look for another, I suppose,” Bob replied.
“There isn’t another. They’ve stopped making them and those who own ’em aren’t parting.”
“Look for something similar, then.”
“Yes, but what about the old car. How would you remember it?”
“Photographs?”
“Perhaps. What about something more substantial?”
“You mean, like a momento?”
“That’s right.”
“The jaguar!” he exclaimed. “The mascot off the bonnet. I’d save that.”
“Good idea,” I told him. “And if you just happened to own an MGB? It’s a very nice car, but not quite in the same class as the Jag you once had. Might you not be tempted to…you know…so you could relive your dreams…?”
“Put the mascot on the MG,” Bob suggested.
“Exactly. And Eileen Kelly said the car was a Jag because of the mascot on the bonnet.”
“Fuckin’ ’ell, Charlie,” he hissed. “It’s a bit far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“I thought you were a Methodist,” I reminded him.
“Only in leap years.” We drank our coffee, reading the notes he’d made. “A more likely explanation…” Bob began, “…is that it really was a Jaguar, driven by someone unknown to us.”
I nodded and placed my empty mug on his desk. “I know, Bob,” I agreed. “But humour me, please. We can either go back to the beginning and start all over again, which will take us nowhere all over again, or we can run it with Silkstone in the frame. So let’s do it, eh?”
“That’s fine by me, Chas.”
“Thanks. I’m going home.”
Sunday I stayed in bed until after ten, had a shower and went out for a full English breakfast. I brought a couple of heavies back in with me and spent the rest of the day catching up on the latest hot stories, a neverending supply of tea at my elbow. Heaven. Annette had said she might go to her mother’s, in Hebden Bridge, and I’d said that I might stay overnight with Bob, so there was no answer when I tried her number. Another communication breakdown. The weather system had swung right round and the day was warm again, with just enough threat of rain to put me off doing some gardening. A quick run-around downstairs with the vacuum cleaner gave me sufficient Brownie points to justify an evening watching television and listening to music. I brought the Chinese painting in from the garage and propped it in a corner, where it caught the light, so I could study it. You are supposed to leave oil paint for about a year to dry before varnishing it, but a month or two is usually enough. A few touches of black contour, I thought, on some of the images, and that would be that. I can’t justify black contours, but they can transform a picture, and V. Gogh did it all the time so why shouldn’t C. Priest? I was pleased with the painting and it was good fun having a whole day to myself. At nine o’ clock I gave Annette’s number another try, and this time she answered.
