Classic in the Barn

by Amy Myers

  ‘Thanks,’ I told the headlights with deep gratitude. I almost offered them a reprieve on the spot, but common sense prevailed. I’d find another home for them when we replaced them with the proper ones. I still wondered why there were no number plates. The car was currently registered, so there was nothing to hide about it.

  I couldn’t get hold of Bea – I had forgotten that sensible people have jobs to go to and that her leave might be over – so I had to curb my impatience until she got back to Greensand Farm that evening. She told me to come up right away, which was noble of her. I offered to take her out to supper, but instead we settled for an Indian home delivery – for three, as she pointed out Zoe would be there.

  ‘Rob too?’ I asked with foreboding.

  A gurgle of laughter at the end of the phone. ‘No knowing, but maybe I’d better order for him too.’

  In the end it was two. Zoe called to say she’d be late – something to do with cooking for Rob, Bea gathered, so it was just Bea, me, the prospect of an Indian home-delivery – and several cupboardfuls of photographs. We gazed at the stuffed shelves in horror.

  ‘Typical of Mum,’ Bea said ruefully.

  My first instinct was to plunge in, scattering pix in all directions, but I was sensible enough to let Bea make the running.

  ‘We’re looking for continental car shows, that right?’ she asked. ‘Here, you look through these, and I’ll take the next one.’

  She turned out the contents of a shelf on to a coffee table for herself and one for me on the other table. In grim silence we began our search. ‘What are we hoping to find?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She gazed at me as if I were mad – not unnaturally – so I hastily amended it to: ‘Car shows that have the Lagonda in them.’

  I searched through several hundred photos of Polly at dinner parties, Polly at dances, Polly in the garden, Mike here, there and everywhere, Bea at various stages of development, Polly laughing, Polly frowning, Polly looking beautiful and suave, Polly looking a mess and even Polly looking downright ugly, as we all can if the camera catches at the wrong moment. Forget about cameras never lying. They can lie all too often.

  ‘Not doing well,’ Bea announced sometime later. ‘A couple of the Lagonda on a picnic, and a few with Grandpa in them, but that’s all. I’ve put them on one side.’ She patted a small heap on the table.

  ‘No car pix at all?’

  ‘Yes, but apart from these I can’t see the Lagonda or any with Mum or Dad.’

  ‘Snap,’ I said in frustration. I’d had the same barren haul. I went over to sit next to Bea on the sofa, taking my own meagre pickings with me. ‘The Wheatsheaf gatherings, Goodwood Revival Day, the Festival of Speed . . . But where are those continental car shows, Bea? I can’t believe they didn’t take any photos.’ Even if Polly and Mike were up to no good, I thought, they’d be anxious to prove they weren’t and therefore would take some happy holiday-mood snaps.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bea looked as puzzled as I felt. ‘Perhaps she threw them away after Dad died.’

  ‘Then why keep these?’ I asked, indicating the British photos.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Bea said abruptly. ‘You go on looking, Jack. I’ll ring the order through. This job’s making me feel sick.’

  Me too, I thought, but I felt contrite at having put her through this ordeal. I was glad she’d left me alone to look through the remaining shelves, though. I’d begun to think the search was going nowhere until – wouldn’t you know? – I reached the very last shelf. Right at the bottom of the last cupboard, a pile of loose photos was hiding two albums. There was something else too, nestling underneath them: two number plates. No ordinary plates – they were the Lagonda’s, according to Swansea when we’d checked it out earlier. I took the albums out to Bea in the kitchen.

  ‘Wedding album,’ she said, not looking at them. ‘I’ve seen it a million times.’

  ‘Then look at the other one,’ I said, feeling a heel. ‘There are two.’

  Reluctantly, she did so – and we struck gold. In fact, it declared itself twenty-four carat on the first page – it was a title page with a Lagonda photo posted beneath the legend: ‘Continental Trips’. How much clearer could it be? Then a little voice inside me murmured: odd, isn’t it? Especially since it was with those number plates.

  Bea recovered immediately, and we rushed the album back to the table in the living room where we eagerly turned the pages. There they all were, neatly captioned. There were photos of the Lagonda, of Mike and Polly standing by them, photos of other cars too, though usually with the Lagonda somewhere in the background; cars, names and dates. What more could I want?

  ‘What do they tell you?’ Bea asked.

  I hadn’t the nerve to reply nothing, or even nothing yet. I could see this was getting to her, though, and so I gently took the album over and began to go through it again. It didn’t tell me anything more than on my first look through. What had I expected? That Polly and Mike would be standing there waving piles of banknotes in high glee? Polly and Mike photographed nipping into a Swiss bank to open an account? Polly and Mike surreptitiously stowing banknotes under the boot floor? Hauling stuff out of that secret pocket?

  Luckily for our morale, the home delivery arrived just as we were both giving up, and so we left the rest of the album to look at later. By the time we had slaked hunger with kormas, poppadoms and vindaloo, and thirst with a beer, I had digested more than curry. I suppose I’d been churning it over sub consciously and reached a conclusion without even thinking it through.

  ‘You know, Bea, that album is like the Lagonda.’

  ‘Meaning?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Don’t know. There’s just something wrong about it. As there was with the car.’ Too late I remembered I hadn’t told her about the pocket and cursed myself. Well, I had to now – and tell her where I’d found the number plates. She listened and, to her credit, didn’t cry out in horror: ‘How dare you imply there was any hanky-panky going on?’

  Instead, full marks to her, she thought it through and said at last, ‘You know, Jack, you may be right. This album isn’t like Mum and Dad. The wedding album is one thing, but it’s not like them to do prissy little title pages to look pretty. Is that the kind of thing you mean about the album? That it’s too tidy?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s the photos.’ I was getting there, albeit slowly.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They seem wrong.’

  ‘How?’ Bea began to look apprehensive. I could see that it wasn’t good for her to think that her parents were indulging in something she couldn’t explain, and I began to wish heartily that I hadn’t embarked on this. But I had, for better for worse.

  ‘Look, would you prefer me to take it away and look at it at home?’

  ‘Not for my sake. I’d rather know now if there’s anything to find.’

  I knew she was a brave lass, and this proved it. So we began again. At first I thought we were getting nowhere, but then a creepy feeling began to take me over. What had I been thinking just now? That the camera could indeed lie, and here, I thought, could be proof of that. Digital photos today can now lie to their hearts’ content owing to on-screen editing, but a few years ago that was less common, especially back in the nineties when some of those photos were taken.

  Oh yes, the camera could lie – with man’s help.

  ‘Bea,’ I said gently, ‘I think some, perhaps all, of these photos are faked. There are perhaps one or two genuine ones put in, but a lot of them are definite fakes.’

  She was gazing at me as if I were Merlin waving a magic want. ‘Don’t be daft – why on earth should they be?’

  ‘I can’t answer that, but look at this one. The Grand Prix Weekend show in Montreux, June 2001. That’s genuine. Now look at this one. Look at the edges of the Lagonda, how sharp they are against the background. And look at this one. I’m pretty sure that’s the same view of the Lagonda as in the other pic.
Exactly the same.’ Another aspect struck me. ‘This claims to have been taken at the Antwerp Classic Salon in March 2003, but it’s the same background as the April Techno Classica in Essen a year earlier, although the Lagonda’s at a different angle. This one has Mike standing by it, but look at the sharp definition round his head.’

  ‘But if you’re right – if – why on earth bother? Why go to those lengths?’

  ‘Because this is a showcase album, designed as such.’

  ‘Why, why, why . . .’

  I had no answer to that. How could I suggest money laundering to Bea? It was humming through my mind like an electric telegraph wire. Why fake car-show pictures if you were really there? Suppose you were actually at dirtier business than that? In Geneva, or Amsterdam . . . And was there a fun element too? I imagined Mike and Polly giggling together as they mocked up this album of their supposed lives together. Could I put that as a thesis to Bea – fun from which she had been excluded?

  Bea poked agitatedly at the rest of the album, not really concentrating on what she was doing. The photos were mostly pasted in, but from between the last two pages a loose piece of paper slipped out. Automatically, I bent down to pick it up and handed it to her. But I could see what it was over her shoulder. ‘It’s that scrap of paper,’ I cried.

  ‘What scrap?’

  ‘The one I found in the Lagonda.’ A very cold feeling was creeping up my spine. ‘It’s the receipt for two cappuccinos, isn’t it?’ There was no sign of the garage receipt, so there must have been something special about this one to make her keep it.

  ‘Yes.’ She was staring at it.

  ‘Why would Polly have kept it? And, moreover, kept it so carefully tucked away?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said with difficulty, ‘because it’s dated the day of Dad’s death, four years ago, Wednesday tenth September.’

  That did it. She burst into tears, and for a while it was me who played Mother Earth.

  SIXTEEN

  Bea had pushed the receipt into my hands in a frenzy as I left. ‘Take it away, and that album. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘For better, for worse, Bea.’

  ‘Yes, I know I wanted you to find out the truth. And I still do. But just tell me when you’ve found it. And make it quick, Jack. I don’t know what’s happening or why, but I want it over. I want Tomas nice and securely behind bars, or if he didn’t kill Mum, whoever did do so. It’s beginning to feel as if there’s a very black pit out there and I’m heading straight for it.’

  ‘I won’t let you fall in, Bea. You know that.’

  ‘Yes. I wish—’ She didn’t finish the sentence. Perhaps, considering the difference in our ages and the emotional state she was in, it was better for both of us that she didn’t.

  Next morning I decided I’d have to go over to Andy Wells’ garage. It would take some doing, because all I wanted to do was look at that album, then look at the Lagonda and try to make sense of what I was seeing and wonder whether it would take me any further. Try as I might, I just could not see Polly mixed up in something so unsavoury as money laundering. Why bother? Just for the hell of it? Because she was so much in love with Mike that she’d agree to his every suggestion? Was she still at it when she died? No way. The Lagonda had been firmly under wraps, and so, I guessed, had that side of her life. Any new life would have been completely different.

  So why had she died?

  Conclusion: someone had known about the money laundering.

  And with that in mind I took myself off to Andy Wells and what remained of Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations. There was a sort of subsidiary garage at the side, an overflow, and I found Zoe and Len there looking as content as possible in reduced circumstances. Cramped though they were, I found them hard at work on a suspension overhaul badly needed by a Sunbeam Rapier, which had originally been booked in for Frogs Hill. As there was only room for one car at a time, the pressure was on for a quick turnaround. What Len thought of this is not recorded.

  I went to see Andy first, out of politeness.

  ‘How’s Bea, Jack?’ he asked.

  ‘Doing OK. Glad when it’s all over though.’

  ‘You mean that Polish chap?’

  ‘Yes. You knew him, didn’t you?’

  He struggled to think of an answer and finally came up with: ‘Came in for a bit of work on his old Fiesta. So what? Is that all you want to know?’ He wasn’t exactly aggressive, but I wouldn’t have wanted to see Slugger Sam walk in at that moment.

  OK, I’d take this bull by its horns. ‘No. Mike Davis’s death, Andy.’

  I could see him stiffen. ‘What about it?’ he shot back at me.

  ‘I wasn’t in England at the time. What exactly happened?’

  ‘It was straightforward enough,’ he muttered. ‘The way I heard it he was on the track of some car in Canterbury, his dream car. A Riley, from what I remember, an RME. They don’t come up often, and Polly would have seen that idea off right away if she’d known about it. Which she didn’t. He never made it to the dealer. Slumped over the seats, dead. Heart.’ He was getting definitely truculent now.

  ‘He was on his own?’

  He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a daily driver?’

  ‘No. The Lagonda.’

  ‘Why the station car park?’

  He shrugged. ‘How should I know? On his way to see the car, most likely.’ His eyes slid past me.

  ‘Who’d you hear this tale from, Andy?’

  ‘Inquest.’ The reply came a bit too promptly, and I doubted very much whether a coroner would be gripped by the details of a dream RME.

  ‘No doubts at the time that it was natural causes?’

  ‘Ask the bloody police. I don’t remember no talk though. Straight heart attack.’

  ‘Could it have been induced?’

  I thought he’d hit me; he didn’t. Instead he went as white as the proverbial sheet. ‘I’ll tell you something, Jack. No one I knew of had an RME on the stocks around then. So don’t go asking too many questions.’ He wasn’t smiling, and I knew it was time to stop. That receipt was for two cappuccinos. Mike could have drunk two cups. He could have treated a stranger. Or he could have paid for someone he knew.

  Had Polly seen the date and realized it could mean something that had never occurred to her before? Something that had made her face very white and very abstracted . . . Had it suggested to her that Mike had not died of a straight heart attack, but could have been murdered? And had that sudden awareness led to her own death?

  It seemed to me that, contrary to Andy’s advice, asking questions was precisely what I should do. As soon as I got back to Frogs Hill, I put in my long overdue call to Brian Woollerton about the Merc and slid in the name of Mason Trent just on the off chance it produced something. Brian evidently thought I was ringing to follow up on the headlights, and the pause and heavy breathing that followed his discovery of what I really wanted was suggestive in itself. The Merc didn’t make much impression on him; it was Mason’s name that set the sparks flying.

  ‘Sure you want me to?’ he growled.

  A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind fool like me. ‘Yes,’ quoth I.

  The frightening probability that Mike had been murdered was one subject I couldn’t discuss with Bea – and yet who else? I was treading on scarily thin eggshells here, and if I wasn’t careful I would end up as the omelette. There was no doubt I was putting myself in the frying pan with a vengeance; the problem was, when was it going to get too hot for my own good? It seemed a big jump from my ‘evidence’ to probable murder, and yet it was a reasonable one – wasn’t it? I mentally ran through the list of people who might know more about the circumstances of Mike’s death than Andy Wells. There would surely have been more gossip at the time . . . or would there? Heart attacks happen. Maybe Mike had had known heart problems. I could talk to Andy again, I could talk to Guy, I could talk to Peter, Rupert, Lorna – even Slugger Sam – but which of them could I trust? Guy or Pe
ter would be my preference – apart from Bea, of course, as a last resort. She’d had enough shocks already.

  In the end the answer was simple enough. I needed a chat with Dave, and when I rang him, the next day, for once he was all for meeting. He had news for me and could I get my butt over to his Charing office soonest? Provided Brandon didn’t reach out an arm and hoick me in as I passed his door, I was only too happy. Dave then changed his mind and suggested a pub in Charing. Charing is a pleasant village drowning in history and on the A20 a few miles from Pluckley. It’s in the lea of the downs, and the short drive there was an enjoyable one. On the North Downs our ancestors had clashed with Romans, Anglo Saxons, and Normans all unsuccessfully and more successfully with Napoleon and Hitler. Carbon footprints from all ages abound in one form or another, and for me being there puts problems in perspective.

  I found Dave sitting in the bar. He was looking more like the Spirit of Ecstasy than ever, as he was hunched up over a pint, looking grimly determined, his hair sleeked back as though about to zoom across the room. I didn’t even have time to sit down before he fired up the engine.

  ‘Another job for you, Jack. A BMW lifted from Wye yesterday. Private residence.’

  ‘What’s so special you need me right away?’

  His idea of an answer. ‘Got anything on Winter’s Merc?’

  ‘Lines open, but nothing yet.’ I’d tried, after all. ‘So what about this BMW?’

  ‘Could be the same outfit as Winter’s Merc.’

  ‘With Kasek the spotter?’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Barry Pole?’

  ‘Um,’ said Dave. ‘Possible.’

  ‘Andy Wells?’

  ‘Not so possible. Jury’s out.’

  I wasn’t hitting the right buttons. ‘OK, Dave. Tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘Big art theft in Norfolk last week.’