‘Give me a hand,’ he said. Together they pulled back the tarpaulin. The front of the car was wrecked, its engine exposed, grille and bonnet missing.
‘Tell me it isn’t,’ Naysmith said in a voice just above a whisper.
But Fox was in no doubt at all. Vernal’s car, the one that had been taken to the scrapyard. Fox tried the passenger-side door, but it was jammed shut from the force of impact. The car’s interior didn’t look as though it had been touched in quarter of a century. There were bits of broken glass on the back seat, but not much else. Naysmith couldn’t get the driver’s door to open either.
‘How come it’s here?’ he asked quietly.
‘No idea,’ Fox said. But then he remembered. ‘Cottage used to be owned by a cop called Gavin Willis. He ran the original inquiry.’
‘So he could have kept the car for himself? Still doesn’t explain why.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ Fox paused. ‘Reckon you can get in through that window?’
He meant the gaping rear windscreen. Naysmith removed his expensive jacket, handed it to Fox for safe- keeping, then hauled himself up, squeezing through the gap.
‘What now?’ he asked from the back seat.
‘Is there anything that might interest us?’
Naysmith felt beneath the front seats, then stretched between them and opened the glove box. He found the paperwork for the car and handed it to Fox, who stuffed it into his pocket.
‘Half a set of spare bulbs and a few sweet-wrappers,’ Naysmith reported. ‘But that’s about it.’
Fox could hear voices down at the cottage. They’d be wondering why his car was still there while he wasn’t. ‘Out you come, then,’ he said.
He helped pull Naysmith through the opening. They were standing side by side, Naysmith slipping his jacket back on, when the garage door shuddered open. Cash and Young were standing there.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Francis Vernal’s car,’ Fox stated.
Cash stared at the Volvo, then at Fox again. ‘How do you know?’
‘Make, model, colour,’ Fox explained.
‘And damage,’ Naysmith added, pointing to the engine casing.
‘I want the pair of you out of here,’ Cash growled, pointing a finger of his own.
‘Just leaving,’ Fox told him.
Cash and Young stayed with them until they’d reached their own car, then watched as they did a three-point turn and drove slowly back down the hill, Cash following on foot, just so he could be sure. They paused while the cordon was lifted, and waved to the uniform as they trundled towards the main road.
‘What now?’ Joe Naysmith asked.
‘This is where you get to show off your detective skills, Joe,’ Fox told him. ‘Kirkcaldy Library – find a phone book for 1985 and make a note of every scrapyard in the area. If we track down where the car went, we’ve half a chance of finding out why it left there again.’
Naysmith nodded. ‘Might not mean anything, of course.’
‘Every chance,’ Fox agreed. ‘But at least we’ll give it a shot, eh?
18
Having dropped Naysmith outside the library, Fox headed for the police station. Rain had started gusting against the windscreen. He turned on the wipers. The drops were huge, sounding like sparks from a fire. He thought back to that day in Alan Carter’s cottage, the two of them seated either side of the fireplace, mugs of tea and an old dog for company. What could have been cosier or more domestic? Yet Carter was a man who had built up a security company from nothing: that spoke to Fox of an inner toughness, maybe even ruthlessness. Then there was the evidence of his old friend Teddy Fraser: the cottage door kept locked at all times – why? What had the jovial old chap to fear? Maybe nothing. Maybe it was the sharp businessman who had to keep his wits about him – to the extent of having a gun nearby…
If the gun was his to begin with; Teddy Fraser thought otherwise.
There was no sign of Jamieson or the woman reporter outside the car park. Fox spotted Tony Kaye’s Mondeo. Pitkethly’s space was free again, but she had warned him against taking it. Looked like the Volvo was going to have to sit on the street again and risk a ticket. Francis Vernal, too, had driven a Volvo. A safe, steady choice, so the adverts would have you believe – Kaye had teased Fox often enough about that. The roadway either side of the crash site boasted a few curves and bends, but nothing serious. Fox thought of the speeding cars that had passed him near the memorial. Were there petrolheads back then? Nothing else for the local youths to do of a rural evening? Could someone have driven Vernal off the road?
Having parked, and looked around for traffic wardens in the vicinity, Fox got out and locked the car. He felt something in the pocket of his coat: the logbook from Vernal’s Volvo. Its edges were brown with age, warped by damp. Some of the pages were stuck together. At the back were sections to be filled out after each regular service. The lawyer had owned the car from new, by the look of things. Three years he’d been driving it, prior to the crash. Eight and a half thousand miles on the clock at the time of its last trip to the garage. The service centre’s stamp was from a dealership on Seafield Road in Edinburgh, long since relocated. There were some loose folded sheets in a clear plastic pocket attached to the inside back cover of the book, dealing with work done to the car and parts replaced. Fox unlocked the driver’s-side door, tossed the logbook on to the passenger seat, and headed towards the station. He was halfway across the car park when his phone rang. It was Bob McEwan.
‘Sir,’ Fox said by way of introduction.
‘Malcolm…’ McEwan’s tone caused Fox to slow his pace.
‘What have I done this time?’
‘I’ve had Fife on the phone – the Deputy Chief.’
‘He wants to pull us out?’
‘He wants to pull you out.’ Fox stopped walking. ‘Kaye and Naysmith can keep doing their interviews and prepare their report.’
‘But Bob-’
‘CID called his office, apparently furious with you.’
‘Because I told them their job?’
‘Because you went barging into a potential crime scene. Because instead of leaving when told, you found somewhere else to stick your nose in…’
‘I went there to assist.’
McEwan was silent for a moment. ‘Would you swear to that in court, Malcolm?’ Fox didn’t answer. ‘And would you have Joe Naysmith back you up?’
‘All right,’ Fox relented. ‘It’s a fair point.’
‘You know better than anyone – we have to stick to the rules.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And that’s why you’re coming home.’
‘Is that an order or a request, Bob?’
‘It’s an order.’
‘Do I get to kiss the children goodbye first?’
‘They’re not children, Malcolm. They’ll do fine without you.’
Fox was staring at the station’s back door.
‘I’ll let them know what’s happened,’ McEwan was saying. ‘You’ll be back here in an hour, yes?’
Fox switched his gaze to the sky above. The shower had passed, but another was on its way.
‘Yes,’ he told Bob McEwan. ‘I will, yes.’
When Fox walked into the Complaints office, there was a note waiting for him from Bob McEwan.
Another bloody meeting. Keep your nose clean…
Fox noticed a couple of supermarket carrier bags sitting on the floor next to his desk. They were heavy. He
