Hope Road (3 page)

“Hey,” she says, a little louder. “Knock-knock, love. Anybody there?”

He turns. His face is smeared with dried saliva and tears, mixed with the grime of wherever he’s been all night, his pale skin turned grey. There’s fresh snot around his nostrils and his eyes are badly bloodshot, as if someone just pepper-sprayed him.

“Sorry,” he says, his voice jerky, his breathing fluttery and irregular.

“Are you gonna eat that, sweetheart?”

He looks down. A fried breakfast sits on a large oval plate in front of him. It’s hardly been touched, just a nibble from one corner of a triangle of toast.

“Shall I take it away?”

“Yes. I mean, please…”

“Is there anything else I can get you?” she asks, pulling the plate towards her. “A flask of coffee to take with you?”

He shakes his head.

She picks up the plate then glances around. People are still watching.

“I can put the bacon in a roll if you like? How about that, love?”

“It’s all right,” he says, pulling himself to his feet. “Thanks.”

He fishes in his trouser pocket and pulls out a twenty pound note.

“I’ll get the change,” she says.

“No,” he says, looking at the money as if he’s glad to be rid of it. “Don’t bother.”

Outside he sucks in the cold air and makes his way across the car park, shoulders slumped, head loose and hanging low, as if he’s just run a marathon. He walks past the parked cars, on towards the slip-road that leads to the main carriageway.

From the glass doors she watches, cell phone in her hand, just in case. When he gets to the slip-road he stops, crouching down on the grass verge and rocking gently backwards and forwards. He stares at the cell phone in his hand, and after a minute or so begins stabbing the keypad with a finger.

“Poor sod,” she whispers, and considers getting her own car, giving him a lift, wherever it is he’s heading.

“Val?”

“Yes?” she says.

“That twenty pound note? The scanner rejected it.”

The manageress looks at the figure hunched down there on the grass verge.

“Ah, well, he didn’t eat anything anyway, did he?”

H
ope Road sits at the feet of the optimistic, vertical city, close to the glamour but somehow cut off from it, left on the outside. This part of Leeds clings to its low-slung industrial past like an old drunk scared to change his ways and knowing that, in any case, he’s not welcome anywhere. Victorian workshops and squat 1920s factory blocks are either bricked up or hide unnamed businesses behind steel-panelled gates topped off with coils of rusting barbed wire. Occasional splashes of colour announce exhaust refits and commercial printing services.

It’s a two minute walk from here to the imposing brick bunker of Millgarth at the bottom of the Headrow, but not many people chance it along these streets alone, especially once the light’s gone. Hope Road. Named at a different time.

Tony Ray’s Motors
is composed entirely of glass and brushed steel, so out of place on Hope Road that it somehow fits, like a single piece of ultra-modern furniture in a musty, time-stained room. Its frontage takes the form of an elongated ‘S’, giving the building an asymmetrical appearance. The glass facade bulges outwards on the left side and curves inwards on the right, as if a big bite has been taken from one side and spat back out onto the other.

The roof slopes slightly upwards at the front, like the peak of a cap, and extends out some way over the forecourt, providing a refuge when it rains. There are three small tables with stools outside on the right, all in brushed steel. Customers can bring their coffee out here and have a smoke, or just take the weight off.

There are no special offers pasted on the curved glass frontage of the premises, no car prices done in enormous orange numbers. Nothing at all. Just the words
Tony Ray’s Motors
above the entrance in a typeface reminiscent of the Ford name badge, which adds a touch of retro panache. All in all, it is about the only secondhand car salesroom a person is ever likely to feel comfortable walking into. Because it doesn’t look like one.

“Freddy?” John says, lumbering through the silently sliding glass doors. He’s dressed in a loose fitting black suit and a blue and white striped shirt, and has the look of someone who finished work hours ago but never bothered to change. He wears no tie, in that particular way that says
I never wear a tie
.

Inside there’s a scattering of black and silver 4x4s and several trim BMW convertibles. But what perfects the air of casual luxury is the aroma of fresh coffee. Sweet and deeply toasted, it hits just the right notes, a strange juxtaposition with the cars, but a welcome one. Behind the motors, in the reception area, a huge shining
Gaggia
espresso machine awaits, its gurgling, steaming presence intended to take people’s mind off the question of whether this really is the place where they want to sign away six months’ gross salary on a secondhand car.

A dozen Bose speakers up in the ceiling are playing local commercial radio.
Simply Red
. He shudders, but knows wine bar music is good for business.

“Freddy’s not here yet,” says a dark-eyed girl as she turns from the espresso machine, a small cup and saucer in her hand. “For you.” A mouth-distorting yawn follows.

“That’s great. Thanks, Connie.”

“I know,” she says, her voice thick with foreign vowels in addition to the yawn, “you don’t know what you could do without me.”

“
Would
do. What I
would
do,” he corrects her.

“Yeah. That.”

Her hair is the same as in the photo, sculptured chaos, as black as John’s but rising above her head like a bird’s nest that’s just kept on getting bigger, with dizzy, unkempt ringlets falling down the sides. Mad, but perfect.

“You came out well in the paper,” he tells her, then takes his first sip of
café solo
. “Seen it?”

“U-hu? Oh, the paper, yes. It’s over here. Not a good photo of you, though,” she says, retrieving the
Yorkshire Post
from one of several small, neat desks that populate the reception area. “Look, can hardly see you at all. Freddy looks good, though.”

“He looks like a big kid in a suit,” John says.

“I think he looks like a, how you say,
boxeador
?”

“A boxer.”

“Yeah, a boxer. Don’t you think?”

“Light-heavyweight, definitely. Tell him. I reckon he’d be pleased to hear that. Did you read the article?” he adds, looking at his watch then out through the great expanse of glass at the front of the building, wondering where Freddy’s got to.

“No. You read it?”

“Not yet.”

He turns on his iPhone. Normally he’d never have switched it off. But yesterday night was special. And anyway, he was with Den; they didn’t both need to be on call.

Connie settles down to read the article in the
Post
, her finger running smoothly across each line of the article, face screwed up in concentration. John sips his coffee and is glad that at least
she’s
made it to work, because it’s her job to bring the fresh croissants, which he can see over by the coffee machine.

About a month ago she arrived on his doorstep, rucksack over her shoulder, not much in the way of a smile. Twenty-six years old, one of those skinny-with-curves bodies, nose pierced and hair like Siouxsie Sioux after a cat fight. The skin-tight jeans she was wearing had a tear in the seat. From behind it looked like she was winking at you when she walked.

Her real name: Concepción Ángeles García Garrido. He’d quickly advised her that Conception was not the best way to advertise her feminine charms in West Yorkshire. So Connie it was.

Although he doesn’t quite understand how, she’s a distant relation from Spain, the land of his
people
, the old country. His half-uncle’s seamstress twice removed, something like that. The Spanish are like that: his dad came to England over half a century ago, but back in the homeland they still think of the Rays as family, especially when there’s a wayward daughter who can’t seem to get along in Madrid and needs a fresh start.

To say Connie lacks the bouncy geniality of a receptionist is something of an understatement. The absence of a happy face, though, is balanced by her absolute insistence that all customers have at least one coffee and something to eat. After the croissants are finished, she’ll whip up some tapas, and by mid-afternoon will have graduated onto almond tartlets. She can take a message, and her overwhelming indifference to the matter of smiling is often misinterpreted as ruthless efficiency. She spends most of the day with her mobile pressed to her ear, talking to a network of local friends that she seemed to make the minute she got here. But it’s a small price to pay for the almond tartlets.

That’s Connie García, his second employee. Which is just as well, because his first employee is still nowhere to be seen.

He goes out back to check the lot. The security lock on the back door opens with a series of grinding creaks, and he kicks at a heavy bolt at the bottom of the door until it shifts with a thud.

The iPhone: ten missed calls, various times throughout the night, all from Freddy.

Strange.

The door swings open. He looks out.

Shit.

It’s not there.

Shit. Shit.

Third car back, middle row. The car behind has been moved up, and the final space, right in front of the gates, is empty. The red Mondeo’s gone.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He’s walking, running back inside…

“Connie,” he says, giant steps over to the coffee machine. He fumbles with it, spilling grounds over the counter. “We had a Mondeo.” He’s manic, gulping for air, hands shaking. “Red. Bought it Monday?”

Breathing heavily now.

Connie doesn’t reply. She stares at him, eyes wide, mouth closed, as if he should do the same.

“Mr John Ray?”

He twists around.

Standing some way back from the desk is a young, gangly man with close-cropped hair and a bad suit. Behind him is a uniformed police officer.

DC Matthew Steele introduces himself.

John swallows. He can hardly hear, blood pumping loud in his ears.

CID. West Yorkshire Police.

“Yes… yes,” he says.

He hears the unintended modulations in his own voice as his lungs fill and empty too quickly.

“Yes… yes…”

Freddy? Did he borrow it?

Something tells him not to mention Freddy.

“No problem,” he hears himself saying. But what are they asking?

Breathe. Breathe normally. Keep calm. Just keep calm.

“Mr Ray?”

The young guy in the suit is talking some more. John is nodding.

The policemen make as if to leave.

“Can you look after things?” John asks, turning to Connie.

“Sure. If anybody calls?”

“Tell them I’ll be back later. I think. Can I borrow that paper?” he says.

She shrugs, watching as he leans over the desk and grabs the
Yorkshire Post
.

“
Video de seguridad
,” he whispers in Spanish as he takes the paper, “
the security video. Red Mondeo.
”

“Okay,” she says, smiling. “I look after things here, is fine.”

She moves off, calm and efficient, towards the little office at the back of the showroom.

Connie. A godsend.

FAMILY OF CRIME TURNS
AN HONEST PROFIT

John Ray, son of former crime boss Antonio Ray, won the
AutoTrader Used Car Dealer of the Year
award last night, at the Leeds Metropole Hotel. He took over the family business just two years ago, following the suspected gangland murder of his brother Joe, and the prize has shocked many in the motor industry.

Tony Ray’s Motors
has been a fixture in the city since 1963, when it was opened by John’s father, Antonio. Apart from selling cars, the Hope Road premises served as headquarters for Antonio Ray’s various outside-the-law activities, a familiar landmark for both the region’s criminal underworld and the West Yorkshire Police.

Antonio Ray emigrated to West Yorkshire from Spain in the late 50s and quickly gained notoriety as a skillful wheeler-dealer, running a distribution network of counterfeit goods from his headquarters in Leeds. He imported fake goods including handbags, perfume, and transistor radios, mainly from Hong Kong and the Philippines. A larger-than-life character, he had his moment of fame in 1985 when he was tried (and acquitted) at the Old Bailey for his part in passing off more than a million pounds in counterfeit banknotes.

Two years ago Antonio’s elder son, Joe, was gunned down at the Hope Road showroom, a crime that remains unsolved. John Ray himself witnessed the murder.

“When Joe died,” he says, “I knew things had to change.” He pushes a thick mop of black hair up off his brow. Despite his forty-three years, there’s not a strand of grey on his head. “Joe was involved in some bad stuff. That’s no secret. Dad too, in his day. But I was never interested in all that,” he says, looking across the shining roofs of his current stock.

So is he the white sheep of the family? I ask. The ex-accountant smiles, telling me he’s heard that one before. There’s a hint of Spanish fire in his golden eyes, but his manner is tempered by a down-to-earth Yorkshire charm. “It wasn’t a matter of going legit. I’ve always been legit!”

It sounds like a well-rehearsed line. Then again, with Antonio Ray as your dad, it’s probably best to get your defence in early.

He talks about the shooting of his brother, and how the experience was a turning point for him. Abandoning his career in corporate accountancy, he decided to turn the family business around, pulling down the grotty 1960s prefab and erecting the current futuristic glass-and-steel showroom. Gone are the days when the place was little more than a front for the family’s dodgy dealings. Today,
Tony Ray’s Motors
has a thoroughly deserved reputation for good service and reliable cars, as
Auto Trader
’s readers have now recognised.