Ambrose hauled his bulk upright. ‘No problem. I don’t think he knows where Davy is, though. I already spoke to him this afternoon.’
‘I don’t imagine he does know,’ Tony said. ‘That’s not what I want to talk to him about, though. I’d go myself, but trust me, I’m the world’s worst navigator. I’d be driving around South Manchester from now through till Sunday if I went by myself.’
‘And you think I’ll do better? I’m from Worcester, remember? ‘
‘That still gives you a head start over me.’
As they drove, Tony got Ambrose talking about his life back in Worcester. What the West Mercia team was like. How he thought Worcester was a great little city, the perfect place to bring up kids. Small enough to know what was going on, big enough not to be claustrophobic. It passed the time, and he didn’t need to think about what he was going to talk to Bill Carr about. He already knew that.
Ambrose turned into the cul-de-sac and pointed out the garage. It looked as if they’d just made it in time; Bill Carr had his back to them, pulling down the heavy door shutter. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Alvin, but I’ll do this better on my own,’ Tony said, getting out of the car and trotting down to catch Carr before he left.
‘Bill?’ Tony called.
Carr turned round and shook his head. ‘Too late, mate. I’m done for the day.’
‘No, it’s OK, it’s not work.’ Tony stuck his hand out. ‘I’m Tony Hill. I’m with Bradfield Police. I wondered if we could have a little chat?’
‘Is this about that business with Warren’s car the other day? Only, I told the other guy. I’m just helping a cousin out. I don’t have nothing to do with their business or anything.’ His eyes were casting about, looking for an escape beyond Tony. He turned up the collar of his denim jacket and shrugged his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Defensive as a guilty child.
‘It’s all right, I just want to have a bit of a chat about Warren and Diane,’ Tony said, his voice warm and confiding. ‘Maybe I could buy you a pint?’
‘He’s in trouble, isn’t he? Our Warren?’ Carr looked apprehensive but not surprised.
‘I won’t lie to you. It’s looking that way.’
He puffed out his cheeks and expelled the air. ‘He’s been a different bloke lately. Like there was something bearing down on him. I just thought it was business, you know? There’s a lot of folk on the skids these days. But he wouldn’t have talked to me about it. We weren’t close.’
‘Come and have a pint anyway,’ Tony said gently. ‘Where’s good round here?’
The two men walked in silence to a corner pub that had once been a working men’s hostelry but had now been turned into a
‘Have they been together a while, Diane and Warren?’ he asked.
Carr thought for a moment, the tip of his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth. ‘Must be getting on for six or seven years now. They knew each other before, it was one of them slow-burn things, you know?’
Tony knew all about slow burns and smouldering fires. And how sometimes they never burst into flames. ‘It must have helped, having the business in common,’ was all he said.
‘I don’t think our Warren could have had a relationship with someone who wasn’t knee-deep in computers. It was all he could ever talk about. He got his first computer when he was still at primary school and he never looked back.’ He swallowed some beer and wiped the froth from his top lip with the back of his hand. ‘I reckon he got the brains and I got the looks.’
‘Did they get on all right, Diane and Warren?’
‘Seemed to. Like I said, I didn’t have a lot to do with them socially. We didn’t have much in common, you know? Warren didn’t even like the footie.’ Carr sounded as if that were clinically abnormal.
‘I’m a Bradfield Vic man myself,’ Tony said. That led them into a lengthy diversion which included giving Manchester United, Chelsea, the Arsenal and Liverpool a good slagging. And by the end of it, Tony had turned Carr into a mate. As they supped their second pint, he said, ‘They didn’t have any kids, though.’
‘You got kids?’
Tony shook his head.
‘I’ve got two, with my ex. I see them every other weekend. I miss them, you know? But there’s no denying life’s simpler without having to deal with them twenty-four seven. Warren could never have hacked it. He needed his space and that’s one thing you don’t get with kids.’
‘Too many people have kids and then act like it’s a big shock that you’ve actually got to interact with them.’
‘Exactly,’ Carr said, tapping his finger on the bar to emphasise the point. ‘Warren was smart enough to realise that wasn’t for him. He made bloody sure of it an’ all.’
‘How do you mean?’ Tony’s antennae were on full alert.
‘He had a vasectomy, back when he was a student. We saw more of each other in those days. He always had a right clear idea about what he wanted his life to be, did Warren. He knew he was smart and he knew he had good genes. But because he knew he’d be a crap parent, he hit on the idea of being a sperm donor. He filled their little plastic cup and took the money and then he went and got himself snipped. What was it he said at the time? I remember it was right clever . . . “Posterity without responsibility.” That was it.’
‘And he never regretted it?’
‘Not as far as I know. He never dared tell Diane, though. She was mad for a baby, especially this last three or four years. Warren said she was doing his head in with it. On and on. The only thing that would do. And because he
