Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (20 page)

Fifteen

With a puzzled look, Henry Woodhouse replaced
the telephone receiver. Finding the scribbled note that had been stuffed under
his windscreen wiper had been a pain, but once it had been found, the police
had been able to establish that the vehicle caught by the speed camera hadn’t
been his. As of course he had known all along.

And now this. Why on earth should some bloke
that he had never met ring up and ask him if he had put his car in for service
at a garage up in the North West? Of course he hadn’t. In fact, he had never
even been to that part of the country. But someone somewhere seemed to be
driving a car around that looked like his and even had his registration number.
After getting a speeding summons, seeing for himself the speed camera photo and
then this phone call, Henry Woodhouse was concerned.

……….

Sitting out on his balcony overlooking the
canal and enjoying the late afternoon sun, Simon Charlton checked through the
list of registrations hung on Peter Archer’s workshop wall. Simon also had a
set of plates in his own garage that dated back to when he had bought a private
number for the little Olympic. He had kept the old plates as a memento but that
couldn’t explain why there had been quite a collection in Archer’s workshop,
all in neat pairs of matching white and yellow plates for front and rear. So
many plates was unusual, so he had made a note of them while waiting for Kevin
to return to the workshop.

Although DVLC would not divulge vehicle
ownership to the public, a friend of Simon’s had run a check on the Police
computer that had thrown up more questions than answers. None of the cars were
local, all being owned and kept as far away Scotland and Cornwall, and since
Green Fields was a caravan park not a commercial garage and Archer wasn’t a
trained mechanic anyway, there seemed to be no reason for any of them ever to
have been anywhere near his workshop. Simon hadn’t actually intended making any
further phone calls, but, his curiosity getting the better of him, he had made
one call and been intrigued by the response. From there a picture had begun to
build and one call had led to another until eventually he had phoned them all.
Now, looking through the list, a clear pattern was emerging. It was repetitive.
Extremely so. Tick, tick
tick
with no crosses. All
eight vehicles fitted the same criteria, or at least, their circumstances.

At first there seemed to be no reason for
plates from cars located in the extreme south or in Scotland to be found in a
sleepy NW village since except for the odd blast along the M6 going from A to
B, all the owners had confirmed that their cars had never been driven to (or
even through)
 
Merseyside or West
Lancashire. But the fourth telephone call rang more than a few warning bells.
The driver of a Mercedes had been caught over the speed limit in Lancashire,
yet the owner lived in Edinburgh. Forced to pay up because the speed camera
photo clearly showed his car, the guy was still angry and outraged because he
claimed that the car had been in his garage in Scotland at the time. Then the
same story had unfolded just a few minutes ago when he had made the last call
to an owner in Cornwall. Just like the guy in Scotland, Mr Woodhouse had
received a summons for speeding but claimed that he had been nowhere near
Merseyside. In his case he had actually been able to prove that the car had been
in Cornwall at the time.

The only conclusion was that the registrations
had been cloned. But why? Cloning registrations was usually an element of small
petty crime like driving off without paying for petrol or at the other end of
the scale by hardened criminals disguising the identity of cars used in
robberies. Peter Archer didn’t seem to fit with either group, and why were
there so many sets of cloned plates hanging on his wall?

Behind him, the coffee maker
swooshed
and hissed like a train getting up a head of
steam. Putting down the list, Simon poured himself a cup of the rich brew
– it was his favourite
Bewleys
blend from
Ireland – and retrieved Archer’s logbook from the desk before returning
to the balcony. The whole thing was a puzzle. Though supposedly searching for a
link to Mike Johnson, all he had actually achieved had been to uncover a car
registration cloning scam. Quite how Archer was involved he didn’t know, and
there didn’t seem much point in following anything up since Archer was now dead
anyway. Nor did there seem to be any connection with Johnson. And another
strange question: why did Archer need to log his time in the workshop? It might
be an issue if the place was a hive of activity and slots were scarce, or
perhaps for third party use like the times he himself had worked on the
Olympic. Kevin said that his mate Rick worked on both the van and pickup for
them but why was there a
nedd
for Archer to log all
his own times in his own workshop?

Settling himself down, Simon checked through
the logbook again. Nothing seemed to be wrong. But nothing seemed to be right
either. There were a few scribbles here and there that were possibly just
absent minded doodling, and a few numbers in the margins, but overall, there
wasn’t much to go on. Except for the PA and SC entries denoting Peter Archer
and Simon Charlton, entries were few and far between. Some of the PA
abbreviations were followed by more letters and since Ex-Van on the night
Johnson had been attacked meant that Archer had been fitting a new exhaust on
the van, then Svc probably meant he was giving it a service. But that didn’t
make sense either. How many times would a van need servicing? Once? Twice
perhaps? Even a maximum of four did not tally with the 21 times that Svc
appeared in the log.

In another strange anomaly, although PA and SC
were entered, nowhere could he find the letters RW. Yet according to Kevin, his
mate Rick Worth – the name stuck in his mind from Kevin’s claim that he
was aptly named and that anything he didn’t know about cars wasn’t worth
knowing – did not appear anywhere. So why wasn’t Mr Worth noted in the
log? Surely it made more sense to detail when a third party was due to turn up
and use the facility than when Archer would be using it himself?

Taking the book back inside, Simon booted up
the Mac and took Firefox on-line. Navigating to a secure data site he entered a
string of letters and numbers then keyed in his credit card number to get the
information he required. Holding down two keys with his left hand he selected
the number 4 and then hit the spacebar, finally clicking the computer mouse to
take a screen shot of the returned information. Intrigued, he went through the
same procedure four more times, finally printing hard copies of the five
screenshots.

Retrieving the screenshots from the printer, he
took them and the logbook back out to the balcony. Although he was no further
forward, his intrigue was beginning to get expensive. And his coffee was now
cold. But somewhere in that little book, he was sure, lay the answer to Peter
Archer’s death, and probably also to Mike Johnson’s attack.

……….

Turning the key in the lock, Joan Johnson
paused for a second before slowly pushing the door open. Though familiar, this
was not her territory. The Palette was Mike’s domain. He loved the shop with
its studio above and was perfectly at ease there. But she wasn’t. Of course she
knew where everything was kept, could work the till and sell things in the
shop, but she was no artist so giving lessons or running group classes was
beyond her. As was the dratted computer. At home she went on-line every day to
check or send email and use the social network sites, but at The Palette Mike
had programmes and systems installed that she just couldn’t fathom. No matter
how you looked at it, The Palette was not within her comfort zone. But with
Mike in hospital and his part time assistant taking time off to look after her
children in the school holidays, either she jumped into the breach or they
would have no income.

Pushing the door open shovelled a pile of mail
into a heap. Closing it again behind her she tugged the ‘closed due to illness’
sign off the glass, scooped up the mail and reached up to switch on the lights.
The silence as she crossed to the little office was eerie. Whenever she had
spent time at the art shop, Mike had been chattering most of the time and there
had always been gentle music playing in the background. Now, despite the window
lights highlighting a display of materials and original artwork, the shop felt
empty.

Hanging up her jacket she stacked the mail on
the desk and dropped down into the chair. Mike’s mail, Mike’s desk, and Mike’s
chair. She was an impostor in his world, so where should she start? Well she
couldn’t put the background music on because it was all controlled by Mike’s
computer and quite beyond her capabilities. But the lights were already on so
waiting for the first customer seemed to be the best option. First she would
need to turn the door sign over from ‘closed’ to ‘open’. Then perhaps a nice cup
of tea before the hordes of customers descended on her. Mike said the shop was
very busy so she supposed that she must get ready.

One hour stretched into two, and then three
(and countless cups of tea), yet she was still waiting for her first customer.
The young waitress from the cafe opposite had popped in to ask how Mike was
progressing but otherwise not a single person had entered the shop. Killing
time – where were all those customers? - Joan reached for the telephone
and dialled a number she knew from memory. Before it rang she put the handset
back in its cradle and cancelled the call. If she had let it ring, what would
the reaction have been? Would she have been shouted at? Would she have been
insulted? Or would the phone have been slammed down on her, cutting her off in
silence? It was a risk, but nevertheless, a chance she had to take. Picking up
the handset she dialled again.

‘Hello Kevin. It’s Aunt Joan. How are you
holding up?’ she enquired. ‘I’m so sorry about your dad. I know we’ve had our
differences, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you.’

There. It had been said. She’d done it. After
months of argument and legal wrangling it had taken her brother’s death to push
her to try to make contact and rebuild bridges. Pensively she waited for some
sort of response. Would there be a response?

‘Oh, hello. Thank you Aunt Joan,’ came the
reply. ‘I’m OK I suppose. It’s not really sunk in yet. I’ve been on site a
couple of times but I can’t concentrate properly and when I get back home I
can’t remember what I did when I was there. Yesterday I locked a guy in the
workshop and didn’t even know it.’

‘Oh dear Kevin. You’ll have to pull yourself
together you know. Have the police any idea who did this to your dad?’

‘I don’t think so. At least, not that they’re
telling me anyway. They’ve assigned me a Family Liaison Officer but he’s more
of a pain in the arse than anything. Gets in my way all the time. It’s like
having a minder or being ten years old again. But they have at last released
dad’s body so I’ll have to arrange the funeral I suppose.’

‘Can you do that Kevin? Do you want me to help
you? He was my brother you know, and you are my favourite nephew.’

‘I didn’t know that you had any other nephews,’
he quipped, ‘but thanks, I’d appreciate that. I’ve never done this sort of
thing before – I was too young when mum died – and if the only
thing that comes out of this is that we get together again then dad won’t have
died completely for nothing I suppose.’ And then as an afterthought, ‘How’s Uncle
Mike by the way? I heard that he had been attacked again.’