Vault

Gray or Greig was Liphook. It was what you might call a dilemma. We decided in the end to fetch the car. Oh, we hadn’t got the keys, but there are ways as I daresay you know. We brought it back to Miracle Motors, paid the fine incidentally and set about trying to contact Mr Gray. Or Greig.’

‘You did all this for someone else’s car?’

Bestwood looked at Wexford the way one might look at a man who has just taken an ice cream from a child or kicked a dog. ‘I’m talking about this car. This is an amazing car, a dream of a car. Right?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Well, me and Mr Mackenzie – he was the manager then – we talked about it, thought what to do. I don’t know if you know Liphook? It’s a small place. We didn’t know where to start, though. We’d no contact details for the young guy. All he’d said was his relation had gone to Liphook. The young guy up in St John’s Wood – what did he look like?’

‘I don’t know.’ Wexford thought of the young man’s body in the tomb. He hadn’t seen it, but he could imagine. But he had no reason, no reason at all, to connect that young man with one seen driving the Edsel. All he knew about the one in the tomb was that he had never been to a dentist and was in need of having one of his teeth filled, had been dressed in jeans and a jacket, whose pockets were full of jewellery worth ?40,000 and a piece of paper with ‘Francine’ written on it and ‘La Punaise’. Oh, and a number, a four-figure number. None of that need be told to Bestwood. ‘What were you going to say about Liphook?’

‘Only that the young guy called him his “relation”. Funny that, wasn’t it? No one talks about his “relations”.’

‘You don’t remember the name?’

‘Only that it was the same name. Gray or Greig.’

‘It wasn’t Keith Hill?’

‘I told you. Gray or Greig. I tell you what, Wally Mackenzie might know. He knew all about it, said we should hang on to the vehicle, but he didn’t know where, there not being that much room at Miracle Motors, so I said let me hang on to it and he said why not. It was all above board. And I’ve had it ever since, taken good care of it, it’s been kept in perfect condition for Mr Gray or Greig if he ever comes back for it. Not likely now, though, is it?’

‘Do you know where Mr Mackenzie can be found?’

‘I know where he lives or used to live. Somewhere in Streatham.’

‘The registration document would help,’ Wexford said.

‘Sure it would, but where is it? I’ve never seen it.’ Bestwood went back to the open front door and called, ‘Cassandra, would you be a duck and fetch me the phone book, darling?’

Cassandra quickly became a duck and fetched it. ‘Here we are,’ said Bestwood. ‘W. P. H. Mackenzie, 27 Villiers Road, Streatham. It’s got to be the right one. No one else’d have three initials.’

Wexford said, ‘D’you mind if I have a look inside the boot?’

‘Be my guest. But you’ll find nothing in there. It’s all clean as a whistle.’

Wexford lifted the boot lid. The boot was empty. Of course. It was clean and odourless.

‘What are you looking for? Dead bodies?’

Bestwood laughed at his own joke.

Walter Mackenzie still lived at the Streatham address. He had left Miracle Motors two years before and gone into partnership with a friend starting a dealership in vintage cars in Norbury, a business which he told Wexford, when he was scarcely in the door, was feeling the recession’s bite. He was a small thin man, much younger than Bestwood, a sharp-voiced man whose tone held a hint of bitterness. The homely, even cosy, atmosphere chez Bestwood was lacking here. The place was furnished with the bare essentials, but cluttered with stacks of paper, magazines and what looked like bills and invoices in need of filing.

‘I remember him,’ he began. ‘He’d pinched that car from his uncle. Not a doubt about it. Wanted to sell it to us but I could see through that. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘They were uncle and nephew? You’re sure of that?’

‘How can you be sure of something like that? He said he was his uncle. Why would he if he wasn’t?’

‘All right. What made you think he’d stolen the car?’

‘I knew the uncle. What was the name? Bray, I think. Or maybe Breck, something like that. His first name was Kenneth. Ken Gray. That guy loved that car, an Edsel Corsair it was. Wouldn’t even have let anyone have a lend of it or drive it round the block, let alone sell it.’

‘The uncle’s first name was Kenneth?’ But it couldn’t have been his uncle … ‘It wasn’t Kenneth or Keith Hill, was it?’

‘No, he wasn’t called Hill. He may have been Keith, not Ken. The nephew may have been called Hill, for all I know. I saw through that boy, whoever he was.’

‘No doubt you told the police?’

‘I what? You must be joking. It was a family affair, wasn’t it? The kid had nicked it while his uncle was away or whatever. Gone to Liphook, he said. On holiday, I reckon, and while the cat’s away the mice will play. That’s all it was, a try-on. I said to him, if he wants to sell his car, you get Ken or Keith to come in here and see me. Of course he never did.’

‘If you can’t be sure of the name,’ said Wexford, ‘have you got any idea where the young man lived or his uncle?’

‘Now that I can’t tell you.’ Mackenzie spoke as if he had already given Wexford valuable information. ‘I can make an intelligent guess.’ Wexford composed his face, to conceal the fact that he strongly doubted this boast. ‘I’d