Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1)

by Vic Marelle

  Looking for an escape, Simon thanked her for the tea, offered to take her spectacles to his optician for repair, and made his way to the door.

  ‘Where are you going young man?’ she said, stopping him in his tracks. ‘I was in the middle of talking to you – don’t just walk off. Now then, where was I? Oh, I know, poor Mr Peter. What a shame that he had that car accident. I always knew that cars would be his downfall.’

  Now only half listening to her, Simon moved away from the door but a handful of odd words stuck in his brain like arrows. ‘What was that Mrs Weston?’ He asked the old woman. ‘What did you say about Peter’s overalls and the workshop?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you listen to anything?’ she snapped. ‘I said young man, that Mr Peter spends too much time in that workshop of his. He’s always got a car of some sort in that garage near the office. If it’s not that old van of his then it is one of those fancy cars that are always there. He must wear those overalls more than his normal clothes. He’s supposed to be looking after the caravan site, not mending cars.’

  ‘No Mrs Weston. You said something about colours.’

  ‘Did I?’ she enquired. ‘Oh, I can’t remember.’ Scratching her forehead, a puzzled look crossed her face, then, just as quickly, her eyes brightened as she suddenly remembered. ‘Yes, I know what it was. I said that Mr Peter always wears blue ones with duck on the back and young Kevin has red ones with oh oh oh on them. Then when he goes out into the caravan park to tidy up the paths or gut the grass he must leave them in the workshop because he just wears those joans things, you know, joans like the cowboys wear. Mind you young man, I don’t know why because when he came to mend my tap he looked pretty scruffy – his joans and jumper were worn out.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he would wear his best clothes to come and crawl under your caravan to work on your plumbing Mrs Weston,’ Simon responded with a laugh. ‘And I’m sure you mean jeans.’

  ‘Joans, jeans – what does it matter? They are all scruffy aren’t they? But he was in his garage when I was coming back with my paper and by the time I got to my caravan he was already here. Why he bothered changing when he already had his overalls on beats me.’

  ……….

  The complete reception building was silent. Except for the launderette, where a solitary woman was waiting for her wash-load to finish, all the lights were off and nothing stirred. Walking along the side of the building, Simon tried the main door into the reception. Locked. The next door was to the office shared by Kevin and his father. Kevin would now be the only occupant mused Simon. It too was locked. No doubt the lad was away from the site making arrangements for his father’s funeral.

  Around the side of the building a storeroom was locked. Next to it, the double doors of the workshop were secured with a big padlock. What should have been a bustling holiday park complex was a desolate and dreary place. Simon looked around. The caravan park was decidedly run down. Weeds were encroaching on the paths, most of the caravans were well past their prime, and with the reception building closed, the overall impression was that of a ghost town. Unless you needed to do the weekly laundry of course.

  Tempted to kick the workshop door out of frustration, Simon idly reached out for the padlock and rattled it. He swore at the closed door and cursed his inability to find answers. Disappointed that nobody was about and he could not gain access to check anything for himself, he vented his frustration on the door, pummelling with both fists clenched. It didn’t achieve anything.

  Turning away from the workshop, he walked back to his little coupe. No further forward, he sat for a few minutes mulling over developments in his mind, such as they were. Ahead of him, a mobility scooter turned out of the side road. It was Mrs Weston again. No doubt she would be pouncing on some poor unsuspecting soul to spread more gossip. But seeing her gave him an idea. Taking a business card from his pocket he wrote a message on its back and strode across to the office, where he pushed the card under the door. Retracing his steps back to his car, the lock on the workshop doors again caught his eye. The padlock was locked tight through the staple, but the hasp was over the top instead of under the padlock. Presumably Kevin had just folded the hasp back over the staple and the padlock so that it looked as though the doors were locked when he had popped out for a while. With only a slight tug, the big door swung open.

  ‘Hello’ shouted Simon into the dark interior. ‘Is there anyone here? Hello. Kevin, are you in there?’

  Silence.

  Looking around, the little access road was completely empty, and Mrs Weston had disappeared completely. He couldn’t see anyone in the murk of the workshop either. Pointing his ignition fob across the road he pressed the button. The indicators on the Olympic flashed and he heard a high-pitched chirp as the alarm armed and the imobiliser activated. Turning back to the workshop he opened the door a little wider to let in more light and located the light switch. One by one the overhead lamps flickered into life and the workshop was bathed in light, the fluorescent tubes throwing a cold green hue.

  Pulling the door closed, Simon worked his way to the back of the workshop where the logbook was stashed. Opening the log he turned to the day of the attack on Johnson. PA / Ex – Van in the log confirmed that Archer had been working on his van that evening. Flicking the pages he looked for the date of the second attack. PA – LG. Clearly that could not also be Peter Archer for by then he was dead. And even if he hadn’t been, he should have been in London

  Taking the log over to a grubby chair he turned back to the beginning and went through its pages methodically. Slowly, a pattern began to emerge. Mrs Weston was right. Peter Archer spent a lot of time in the workshop. PA appeared regularly. Here and there at first, then a regular three times every week for several months. And always on the same days each week, like set appointments. A couple of times there was SC, that would be when Simon had been working on the Olympic, but other than Brks following an entry a few weeks previous and Ex-Van on the night of the first attack, there were no other indications of what Archer senior had been doing. Just PA indicating that he had been in the workshop. Brks might mean brakes and Ex could be short for exhaust, but surely he didn’t need to work three nights a week on the van.

  ‘Hello. Anybody there?’

  Simon froze. Silhouetted against the now open doorway he could see Kevin. Had Simon aimlessly wandered into the workshop, or had he been there working on the Olympic, his presence would have been legitimate – but how could he explain rummaging through private cupboards, removing a personal log and settling down in a chair to pore over its contents? With difficulty, certainly. So not able to move for fear of attracting attention, Simon remained perfectly still and said nothing, hoping not to be noticed.

  With a click, the lights went off, plunging the workshop into darkness and throwing Kevin into stark silhouette in the open doorway. The big door swung closed and there was a clang and a metallic thump as the hasp was swung over the staple, the padlock being closed and locked. Outside, a car door slammed, an engine started up and a vehicle drove off.

  In the silence, Simon could hear his own heart thumping. Dedum, dedum, dedum. Cautiously he worked his way back across the workshop in the gloom, aiming for the slit of light under the big doors and feeling his way with care. He gave the door a push, but held firm by the big padlock it moved only a few inches. Working from memory and feeling his way slowly to the side, he flicked the lights back on. Kevin would have seen the coupe outside, so the logical thing to do would be to find a plausible reason to have been in the workshop and then to call the lad on his mobile asking him to return and unlock. That would also give him time to replace the log. Reaching into his pocket he realised that his phone was still in the coupe, linked to the Bluetooth hands free unit. Blast!

  Looking around the workshop, Simon saw the door Kevin had disappeared through when he had made them all a cup of tea. Presumably it led into the reception building. It too was locked. Hanging on a hook on the door were
two pairs of overalls; a blue pair and a red pair. Mrs Weston’s duck and oh oh oh suddenly began to make sense. On the red overalls, each of the four circles of the Audi logo would look like several letter ‘O’ to the old woman, while on Peter Archer’s blue ones, the first four letters of Duckhams spelled duck.

  Turning back from the door he looked around for any possible means to get out - a window, a door – anything. Almost every space along the walls was filled with cabinets, benches and a desk. Tools, gaskets, number plates and other bits of cars long ago scrapped hung on nails. Amid the automotive junk art gallery, save for the big double doors and the door to the reception, both of which were locked, there was no way out.

  Wandering back to the chair, Simon picked up the small logbook and to cover his tracks put it back where he had found it on the shelf. But with Peter Archer no longer in need of it, the likelihood of the book being missed by Kevin was slight, so he slipped it into his pocket instead. Piled up with junk, the desk was a mess. A couple of empty fast food containers vied for space with a few spanners, dirty rags, coiled jump leads, a dirty cup and old newspapers. Somewhere towards the back, a red neon blinked from under an old rag. Under the rag was a telephone.

  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.