Avenida Hope - VERSIÓN BILINGÜE (Español-Inglés) (John Ray Mysteries) (Spanish Edition)

by John Barlow

  The dress is expensive. How can you tell, Den asks herself? She has no idea, no interest in clothes. But it looks good. Short and black. Too short, though. With the girl’s legs doubled awkwardly beneath her the dress has ridden up, revealing a black thong and a tiny tattoo of a bird in flight on her thigh. Over the dress she wears a scarlet fur jacket trimmed with leather of the same colour, the kind of jacket meant to be worn tight in at the waist to emphasise the bulk of fluffy fur on the torso and shoulders.

  Her eyes, thank God, are closed, just a sliver of white visible from one. There’s some swelling though.

  “Late yesterday evening, apparently. Pretty, isn’t she?”

  Den wants to punch him in the mouth, send him sprawling on the fucking tarmac. But how many dead bodies will it take before she starts making jokes too? When will she stop feeling any pain for them?

  She wants to say something, but nothing springs to mind. A dead girl. A lovely, attractive young woman. That’s how she’d describe the victim. A lovely, beautiful girl. Fit, they say in Leeds. Fit as a butcher’s dog. Her dad used to say a looker, as if the woman was forcing him to look, or she was looking for attention. A right looker.

  “Tarty,” Baron suggests, as if he’s gonna write it down as his official description of the deceased.

  “Don’t you have any respect?” she whispers.

  It’s corny, she knows it is. But so what? This silly bitch will have died for something as corny as a few wraps of coke. It’s unbelievably corny, right down to the fucking Ford Mondeo abandoned here, under a flyover.

  “Bruising on the head and neck, and a heavy blow near to the temple. Skull cracked, I think.”

  Den can see it now, a dark patch of matted hair on the side of the girl’s head.

  “She’s been in the passenger seat and the back,” Baron adds. “Red fluff everywhere.”

  “Sexual, then,” she says.

  He shrugs. “We’ll see.”

  She breathes, deep and slow, trying to guard against his deliberate insensitivity, his dead body manner. Everyone has one. Steve’s a bloody good detective and a good bloke. Insensitive sometimes, but he’s good. And he’s brought her out here because some arsehole journalist spotted her and John last night.

  As she breathes she catches the smell of the girl’s perfume rising from the boot. Fruity, like tinned mandarins and peaches. Plus a woodiness. Incense? John has taught her to describe the tastes and aromas of wine and food, to open up her senses and say exactly what she’s experiencing, unlocking the memory of tastes and smells deep within.

  “Opium,” she tells Baron, still looking down at the girl. “She’s wearing Opium.”

  “So. Pretty girl dead in an abandoned car in the middle of the night. Wearing Opium and little else. Party!”

  Den spins around, ready to snap.

  But Baron’s no longer looking at the girl. A SOCO is bringing something over to him, a small piece of card in a clear plastic evidence bag.

  “With the documents in the glove compartment,” the man in white says as he hands Baron the bag, before returning to his work on the interior of the car.

  Baron examines the card for a second or two, holding it up to the light. A business card. Tony Ray’s Motors, Hope Road, Leeds 9.

  She doesn’t need to see it up close. Recognises the logo, the same one above the entrance of the showroom. She wants to believe it’s a joke. That Baron planted it there in the glove compartment. But she knows it’s not true.

  Jesus fuck.

  “John Ray. You with him all last night, were you?”

  She sighs.

  “Yes.”

  He remains calm. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the cordon.”

  She marches off before he can see the colour rise in her face. By the time she’s been logged out of the crime scene and is back by her car, fumbling for another cigarette, he’s come across to join her.

  “Why don’t I drive you in, Den,” he says. “Y’know, do things right.”

  She stops, a new cigarette already between her lips.

  “Okay,” she says. “Just give us a second.”

  She lights up, then pulls her mobile from a pocket and offers it to Baron.

  “You want this?” she asks.

  He shakes his head. “No need. I’ll have him brought straight in. It’s not as if you’re gonna ring him from my car.” An articulated truck passes overhead with a great whoosh, its tarpaulins billowing violently in the wind. “Were you with him all night?”

  She nods. “About eight thirty in the evening til just after you called this morning. We were up late. If he went out during the night it was between four and eight. But I’d have noticed. I’m a light sleeper.”

  But you know that, she decides not to add.

  “Right then,” he says, “let’s go. It’s not that I don’t trust you…”

  She doesn’t need telling.

  Even before they set off for Millgarth, the order has been sent to bring in John Ray for questioning.

  And DC Denise Danson, suddenly, is an alibi witness in a murder investigation.

  Three

  He stares at the endless stream of cars and trucks that flash past on the other side of the thick glass. Occasionally he looks up the road and watches one come into view, following it all the way down until it’s gone again. His mouth moves fractionally as if he’s counting the cars as they race past; like a child, he seems mesmerised by their speed and the fact that he can sit so close yet be safe.

  He’s not a child, though. He’s twenty-two, over six feet tall, and built like a bear. His grey suit is so badly creased it looks as if it’s made from mail sacks, and his short blond hair is untidy and tufted with dirt. He’s not counting the cars, either. He’s crying, lower lip bobbing up and down just enough to be perceptible to the dozen or so customers in the place.

  “Are you all right, love?” she says, standing a fraction further away than she might, and knowing that everyone else in the Little Chef is watching.

  She’s just about old enough to be his mother, and she keeps it pally, the way you’d speak to someone to cheer them up. She can see that he’s young, but the sheer bulk of him, the dirty suit straining to contain his massive shoulders, makes him look older, which somehow makes things worse. She’s seen men cry before, but not like this.

  The serving staff have been keeping an eye on him. One couple has asked to move, and others look on with nervous curiosity and eat their meals quickly, keen to be away.

  “Love, are you all right there?” she says again.

  He’s been staring out of the window for an hour. Every so often he’ll cup his face in both hands to muffle a new onset of throaty, hawking sobs, which degenerate into fits of coughing so intense that he seems to be choking on his own grief. Then, with his chest still heaving, he’ll turn back to the window.

  What worries her is not the crying. It’s the thought of what might happen next. Does he have a knife, a gun? Could he take a hostage? These things happen, no use pretending they don’t. And it’s not as if anyone here’s going to stand up to him. Young bloke his size? He could do exactly what he wanted…

  “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?”

  Four

  Hope 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.