Hope Road (6 page)

“I’ll give you a ring later,” she says, still looking down at the ground. “I’ll see what I can find out. And
please
, don’t mention this to anybody.”

She turns to go.

Baron emerges from the station entrance, sees them, makes his way over.

“DC Danson,” he says.

“Steve.”

She hesitates, doesn’t move.

John is still leaning against the wall. It takes a couple of inches off him, bringing his eye line down level with Baron’s.

“Mr Ray,” the Inspector says. “You’d be a lot more help to us if you were out and about look for your boy Freddy.”

“Right onto it,” John says, and stomps off down the street, clouds of blue smoke billowing out behind him.

They watch him go, heavy-framed but spritely, part Gérard Depardieu part storm-trooper, black jacket wide open, flapping in the wind. Where do you get that sort of presence, Baron asks himself? John Ray exudes an intense physical assuredness wherever he goes, something relaxed but also slightly dangerous. And he always looks as if he’s just walked out of a casino at seven in the morning.

“You know you shouldn’t be…”

“He texted me,” she says. “I was just filling him in on the rules. No more contact. He understands.”

“It looks bad. Murder investigation and we’ve got a CID officer playing alibi for a major witness.”

“I
know
.”

John disappears around the end of the building. Still they look, as if he might reappear.

“Very bad,” Baron says slowly, as if he’s waiting for something. “You really need to sort out this relationship, Den.”

It’s none of Baron’s business, she tells herself. But she’s wrong. It’s police business now. John Ray is police business. And she’s right in the middle of it.

“It’s casual,” she says, searching her pockets for cigarettes, knowing that there are none there. “With John, it’s not as if it’s…” she struggles for a word, “…permanent or anything.”

“Really?”

“You know all this, Steve. When his brother was shot, he wouldn’t see anybody. Counsellor, family liaison team, nothing. Only me. He was a mess.”

Baron nods. He knows the story. Den brought John Ray back from the edge, and their relationship grew out of that, unexpected but somehow inevitable. She’s never tried to hide anything from her colleagues. That’d be asking for trouble. The whole station knows, Baron better than anyone.

“You enjoy the awards thing last night? Posh frocks, cocktails?”

“Yeah, it was a laugh actually.”

“Listen, Den. Keeping a change of clothes at John Ray’s place is one thing. Having your hands all over him in a room full of secondhand car dealers and journalists is another.”

“Is that the way your journo friend put it?” Den says. “Bit sensational, don’t you think?”

Baron’s head snaps towards her.

“The girl from the
Yorkshire Post
, I assume,” she says, playing innocent. “I saw her there last night.”

His phone goes off. She recognises the ringtone immediately:
Derrrr-DA… Derrrr-DA…
the cello music from
Jaws
.

“My sons downloaded it for me,” he says as he tries to locate the phone in the various pockets of his suit.

He was supposed to be taking the boys out today. His weekend with them. When he rang to cancel, still looking down at the dead body of a young woman in the boot of the car, the twins had already finished breakfast and were ready to go.

“Baron. Yes, I’m out the front… Okay… Right. Yes. Thanks.”

He digests the news for a second. John Ray was telling the truth: the trip to Peterborough yesterday, and his whereabouts on Monday morning, right down to the taxi. It all checks out. They’re even checking CCTV on Kirkstall Road to see whether he really did buy the Mondeo there.

“Okay, let’s find Freddy!” he says as he spins around and heads for the doors.

Den follows him inside. And as she looks at herself in the glass of the door, a very confused witness looks back.

W
hen he gets back to the showroom it smells even better than before.

“I thought I’d carry on as normal,” Connie says, coming from the tiny kitchen at the back with a fat potato omelette an inch thick and far wider than the plate it’s sitting on.

One look at it and he’s thinking longingly of Spain.

“You want?” she asks.

“Not just now, thanks.”

“Sure?”

She sets it down next to the
Gaggia
and serves herself a slice.

“I think we might be beginning to attract people for your food rather than the cars.” He glances around at the empty showroom. “Not this morning, though.”

“The police,” she says, waving an empty fork out in front of her, words partly muffled by soft potato, “probably frightened people away.”

“Been back already, have they?”

“They parked right outside. Two cars. One of ’em with, you know, the lights on top.”

He nods, then notices how incredibly quiet the place is. There’s no music playing. But it’s not just that. It’s Freddy. Without him the showroom is dull and soulless. This is Freddy’s sales floor, his domain. He sets it up, and when a customer walks through the door he knows exactly where to steer them. The perfect salesman.

Without Freddy,
Tony Ray’s Motors
is nothing. He’d stood with John and watched as the great sheets of curved glass were lifted into position, and they’d popped Champagne together when they opened for business, wondering who on earth was gonna venture down Hope Road for a secondhand beemer. About eighty percent of sales are Freddy’s, and John often jokes that by rights the business should be his. The truth is it was never a joke. If everything goes to plan, in five years’ time the place will be signed over to Freddy. He doesn’t know it yet. And he might never need to, because things have just started
not
going to plan…

“Two cars?” he says. “They must have thought Freddy might be here.”

“Yeah, well he isn’t,” she says. “He called me, though.”

“He
called
?”

“This morning, soon as I got in. ‘Tell John I’m sorry.’ That’s all he said.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Would it have helped?” She holds open her hands, the gesture almost protective, like a parent indulging a teenager. “My Uncle Henrique, y’know, he always says,
piensa luego habla
, ‘think then talk’. So that’s what I did. Think. And now I talk.”

“Perhaps in future just talk, right?”

“He sounded in trouble,” she says, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her tight black jeans. “Anyway, he rings me, yeah? My phone. But if you want I tell everything to everyone, you, police, everybody. About Freddy… the Mondeo…”

“That’s all he said?” he asks, ignoring her petulance. “That he was sorry?”

“Yes. Nothing else. He hung up.”

John flops down to the floor, his back against a car, legs out in front of him on the polished concrete floor.

“It’s the girl, isn’t it?” she says. “The one on the news. The police wouldn’t tell me why they were here, but it was on the radio when they arrived…”

“Shit, it’s only just turned eleven. It’s on the news already?”

“
Sí
. A young woman, it said. Found dead in a car.”

“It was the Mondeo. She was in the boot,” he says, hanging his head and rubbing his face in both hands. “What did the police say?”

“They asked me where I was last night.”

“What did you tell ’em?”

“Movie and then a pizza at a friend’s flat, then sex til late.”

“You told ’em that?”

“Why not? It’s the truth. And the neighbours downstairs bang on the ceiling every time we put on music. You know the type…”

The type who like to sleep at night, yeah, I know.

He has to smile. He and Connie have got the same alibi for last night. Only Connie has witnesses, and they’re armed with broom handles.

“I had to give them my friend’s number, as well,” she adds. “One of ’em went outside and phoned him straightaway.” She holds up her cell phone. “He told ’em the same.”

She pockets the phone and eats more omelette.

“Think, then talk!” John says. “What did your uncle Henrique do, anyway?”

“Same as your dad.”

“Henrique? Didn’t he make ceramic tiles or something?”

She exhales theatrically. “And your dad, he sold cars, right?”

If there’s a twinkle in her eyes, it’s dampened by their dark, slightly puffy appearance. The eyes, never mind the neighbours, confirm what she was doing last night.

He remains there on the floor, watching her eat. His thoughts turn again to Spain, then to his dad. It had been a fine, warm afternoon, and they were in the carefully manicured gardens of the nursing home, amid some of the region’s most pampered geriatrics.
There’s a girl from Spain
, Dad said. The daughter of someone they knew back in the old country,
just a
chiquilla
, a young thing
…

It was the only time he’d ever asked anything of John.
Do this for me
, he said with an easy smile, the Tony Ray smile, the one that had always got him whatever he wanted.
Let this slip of a girl work in the new showroom. A favour to her family back home
…

For a long time no girl showed up. John forgot all about it. Then she arrived, all hair and winking buttocks. And the truth was that although he couldn’t say exactly how or why, Connie was a godsend.

They make coffee and take it outside. The early autumn sun has crept down onto Hope Road and the wind has dropped. Nestled in the inward curve of the showroom’s glass frontage, it could almost be mid-morning on the continent.

“So,” he says, lighting a cigarette and savouring the tobacco rush as he inhales, trying to ignore the heady mix of self-loathing and guilty pleasure of the failed ex-smoker, “what did the police ask you about the car?”

“They say they wanna see where it was. I show them, out back. They look at the gate. No damage, still locked. We come inside, and they ask if it’s in the computer.”

“The Mondeo?”

“I say yes, I suppose. We look, and it isn’t. I say it’s only been here a few days. I haven’t got around to it, y’know.” She glances at him and takes a quick drag on her cigarette. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Anything else?”

“They took the security video for yesterday.”

“Shit, the video. Did you manage to go through it before they arrived?”

“Yes. Freddy took the car at midnight, a few minutes after. Looked in a hurry. And worried.”

“Did they take all the surveillance tapes for last week?”

She shakes her head.

“No,” she says, taking a sip of coffee then fiddling with her cigarette. “I put the others in the filing cabinet in the office.”

“You
hid
them?”

She shrugs. “That’s where the video recorder is. It’s normal. The police, they say is this the only tape? I think they mean for last night. It’s true.”

Withholding evidence?

He detects the slightest hint of a smile as she fills her lungs with guilt-free tobacco smoke and blows it out in one long plume above their heads.

John gives Freddy another try. This time Freddy answers.

“Freddy!” he says, sticking a finger into his ear. “Where the hell are you?”

He listens, but Freddy isn’t making much sense, other than that he keeps saying sorry.

“Freddy, listen. What happened?”

“She’s dead,” is all he can hear between long bouts of phlegmy coughing and what sounds like the drawl of exhaustion.

“Who, Freddy?”

“In the room,” he says, but quietly, as if he’s trying to make sure no one overhears.

“What room, Freddy? What happened?”

The reply is even more muffled. ‘I don’t know’, he thinks he hears, but the voice is distant now, drowned out by a metallic sound, an echoey jangle, something familiar that he can’t quite place.

“Freddy? Freddy?”

But Freddy’s gone.

John rings again. Nothing. Phone unavailable.

“Shit!” he says, tossing his iPhone onto the table.

“Did he say a
room
?” Connie asks.

He nods. “And not much else. He knows about the girl though.”

He looks through the glass into the showroom. Freddy’s little kingdom. Big, barrel-chested Freddy, who only has to stand next to a car and it’s sold. He’s not perfect, but there’s no way he raped and killed a girl and dumped her in a car.

A car with
fifty
grand in it.

“So what do you think?” he asks Connie.

“I think he’s in love.”

“
What!
”

“You must have noticed. Jumpy, excited, full of life?”

“He’s always full of life.”

“And he said a room?” Connie asks.

“Yes. His flat, could it be? The police’ll already be there. No point me going. And it’s
the
room, he says. What does that mean? What room? Jesus, Freddy!”

“Try the
Eurolodge
. It’s a hotel, not far from here.
Eurolodge Hotel
.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it. Up on the York Road. But, what, he had a
room
there?”

“No. But he’s been there a lot. Last few weeks. I’ve heard him planning to meet people up there.”

She stands and gathers the cups and saucers.

John looks again at his empty showroom.

“While I’m gone,” he says, “would you…”

“I know. Look at the other videos, see if he’s borrowed the car before.”

He watches her go, the rip in her jeans winking at him.

Think then speak… I like it.

T
he
Eurolodge Hotel
occupies a squat, pre-war office block a mile out of town on the York Road. When the building was new it would have been right next to the trams going in and out of the city. But now its two stories of old red brick and stained concrete sit beside four lanes of relentless, fast-moving traffic.

There are two shops opposite the hotel. One is a voluntary community centre, although it’s closed today, the other
to let
. Behind the hotel is a wide expanse of disused land, and further off a couple of industrial units and a boarded-up pub.