by Mark Eklid
The man in the driving seat was stony-faced, every inch the chastised child. Eventually, he gave in.
‘OK,’ he said.
‘Good. Which day are you back?’
‘Thursday. Late Thursday, probably.’
He nodded. He was beginning to see the sense in it.
‘You are right, Graham. Go to see Bentley and make it good. We’ll speak on Friday morning and you can tell me how it went.’
‘Sure.’ Graham released his grip on his son’s forearm and gave it a rewarding ‘well done’ pat.
He moved to open the car door. He had what he wanted.
Their attention was caught by a loud roar as a motorbike turned into the car park. Its owner clearly enjoyed revving the engine as a way of getting noticed.
‘Good lord! That looks a bit of a beast.’
It was sleek and black, like a drag racer, with three thick chrome tubes feeding from the engine to a chunky double exhaust, which seemed to serve mainly to amplify the roar generated by each flick of the rider’s right wrist.
Andreas surveyed its magnificent curves appreciatively, the way some men pore over the sight of a glorious work of art or a beautiful woman.
‘Triumph Rocket 3,’ he said. ‘The 2500cc engine is the largest in the world for a production bike and they reckon it has a top speed of 145 miles an hour. Very impressive but I still prefer the Ducati XDiavel S if you’re going to go for a cruiser. They’re both beasts but the Ducati is more of a sexy beast. Italian, you see.’
Graham watched as the bike chugged around the corner.
‘You know your bikes. Do you have one?’
‘Not anymore.’ His tone was heavy with regret. ‘I decided to sell mine soon after the accident. All part of becoming a more responsible adult, I suppose. Still.’ He turned to Graham with a broad smile. ‘The Jag has its consolations, I suppose.’
He tapped the steering wheel.
‘I must let you get on your way,’ said Graham, taking his cue. ‘Safe journey and I’ll see you on Friday.’
He watched as the silver Jaguar pulled away from the traffic lights and turned right to head towards the motorway.
Putting the last piece into the puzzle regarding the motorbike had been a bonus. He no longer considered it a serious possibility that Andreas had been the mystery biker who might have been involved in the fatal road accident anyway. It just made no sense on any level.
His main aims for the meeting had been achieved and he had also formed an ad hoc theory which potentially went a step closer to explaining the arson attacks. Making the effort to get out of bed earlier had definitely been worth it.
15
Graham made the call to the Rother Valley Transport depot, looking to set an appointment to see Doug Bentley, shortly after he arrived at work for the start of his shift. He was told the boss was not available but got the feeling he would not have been put through, as he had asked, whether Bentley was available right then or not. So he left his mobile number and asked to be rung back.
There was the sound of raucous laughter behind him as he hung up and he spun in his chair to see who the source of it was. It was Ray, the driver who had shown him around the cab of his lorry on the day Andreas gave him his first tour of the depot. He had nurtured a look that made it hard not to notice him and he had a laugh to match. Ray was attempting to wind Zoe up about her broken foot. She was threatening to kick him where he didn’t want to be kicked to prove she still had full mobility.
Ray was still laughing as he picked up his delivery note and set off to do his pre-trip vehicle checks. Graham snatched the high-viz jacket off the back of his chair and set off after him.
‘Ray!’
He stopped midway through pulling the door open on his way to the yard and held it open as Graham, scrambling to find the arm hole in his jacket, caught up.
‘Now then, Darth. How’s it going?’
Graham completed the challenge of pulling on the jacket.
‘Darth?’
‘That’s what the mechanics are calling you.’ Ray chuckled and stopped walking to face his puzzled co-worker.
‘You know, Darth Vader. As in Star Wars. As in...’
He cupped his hands over his mouth to muffle the sound of his voice and spoke an octave or two lower than usual.
‘...Luke, I am your real father.’
They set off walking again, Ray smiling to himself.
‘I see. That’s quite good. A damn sight more original than what I usually get, I must say.’
They turned the corner and headed towards the imposing flat front of the red and yellow tractor unit parked to their left.
‘I bet. You must have loved it when Baywatch was at its peak.’
Ray pressed the keypad as they got closer, opening the cab doors.
‘I had it before then as well. People used to think it was hilarious to put on a voice like that car computer and say things like: “May I suggest you engage the on/off switch, Graham?” It wore very thin after a while.’
‘Knight Rider! I used to love that!’
Graham shook his head. ‘I wasn’t a fan.’
Ray turned to face him.
‘You know, you should have done what my mate used to do. His name was Michael Jackson and everybody knew him as Mick, but whenever he met people for the first time he’d introduce himself as Michael Jackson. If they came back at him with something stupid like “give us a moonwalk, then” he’d know they were a twat and he shouldn’t have anything else to do with them. He used to say it was a very useful filter.’
‘Ha! That’s so true. I wish I’d thought of that.’
Ray continued his walk towards the driver’s door.
Graham moved to intercept him.
‘Before you get on with your checks, Ray, I wondered if I could just have a quick word. Just between me and you.’
He stopped.
‘Sure. What is it?’
Graham moved two steps closer.
‘It’s about Chris Yates. I’m trying to make sense of this awful business and you must have worked with him for a long time. Do you know of anything he might have got himself mixed up in that landed him in such trouble?’
Ray’s face turned serious. It was a look that, with his physical size, style and tattoos, made him appear quite menacing, though Graham already knew that was not in his nature.
‘I worked with Chris for years but I can’t say I ever really got to know him. I’m not sure anybody really knew him. He was definitely one who kept to himself, Chris, and, from what I’m told, he never really made much of an effort to be sociable when he was on the road either, but I never got the impression he might be on the fiddle. I certainly never heard anything. As I said, he wasn’t the type who would give you a great many clues but, from what happened, he must have been caught up in something. He wouldn’t have got sacked for nothing and he certainly wouldn’t have got killed for nothing. I guess we’ll find out before too long what it was.’
Graham nodded, solemnly. He was hoping to give the impression he was simply curious rather than conducting inquiries for a different purpose.
‘Have you ever come across people at the company who might be doing a bit on the side? It must be tempting for some people to think that the odd flat screen TV wouldn’t be missed if it disappeared off the load. There must have been some of that going on.’
‘You hear about it at other companies,’ Ray stroked his long beard. ‘But, do you know what, I don’t think I’ve once come across people doing that here. Old man Johnson was a really top bloke. Nobody had a bad word for him because he took care of his employees like we were all family and everybody who worked for him showed him that loyalty back. We were a really tight-knit bunch.
‘When Andreas took over, he carried on in the same vein. I think everybody made an even bigger effort for him in light of what he must have gone through and I’m certain he recognised that. I know we all have a gripe or two with his Rottweiler and it’s not unknown for him to
chew your arse himself, if you’ve done something wrong, but you’re never in his bad books for long. He’ll never hold it against you. Andreas is rock solid, just like Harry always was, and people like working for him. He’s a good man, your son. You should be proud of him.’
The words brought a smile to Graham’s face. Parental pride. This was a new sensation for him.
‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’
His mobile phone began to ring. He retrieved it from his trouser pocket. It was an unrecognised mobile number.
‘I’d better get this. Cheers, Ray. Hope the trip goes smoothly.’
Graham pressed the green answer button.
‘Hello?’
There was a moment of silence from the other end, then a voice.
‘Doug Bentley. I’m told you want to talk to me.’
‘Oh hi, Doug, I’m...’
‘I know who you are.’
The bluntness of the tone was off-putting but Graham pressed on with the approach he had rehearsed in his mind.
‘OK. I wondered if we could meet up. There’s been a fair bit of unpleasantness between you and Andreas recently and I wanted to try to clear the air.’
He allowed the proposition to hang for a while.
‘You should get that lad of yours to watch his mouth then.’ Bentley was clearly still not happy about his previous visit.
‘Look, I’m sure things were said on both sides that shouldn’t have been, but what I’m suggesting is me and you meet up and sort it out. I’ve talked to Andreas and he knows he went too far. He wants me to patch it up between you.’
Silence. Graham hoped Bentley was thinking it through.
‘All right. I’ll talk to you.’
‘Great. Are you around later today? Or tomorrow?’
‘I can’t do today or tomorrow. I’ve got too much on. We can meet Thursday evening. I sometimes go for a pint after work at the Golden Ball in Whiston. Do you know it?’
‘I don’t, but I’m sure I can find it.’
‘Meet me there at half six.’
He hung up. It wasn’t the friendliest of exchanges, but the arrangement was made. At least it would be fresh in his mind for when he reported back to Andreas on the Friday morning.
Janet was keen for an update as they drove home to Unstone. Graham had told her about the morning meeting with Andreas as they were on their way into work but he was able to expand on his findings by explaining about the phone call with Doug Bentley and the brief word with Ray. He felt like it had been a very productive day.
‘You’ve been busy,’ said Janet, appreciatively.
He didn’t feel like it had been an effort, though his attention levels dropped in the afternoon as the early start, as much as anything, took a toll. He was enjoying the buzz of the new research project and believed he was really making progress. He was, however, looking forward to switching off in front of the TV and sharing a bottle of wine with Janet.
There was little more he could think of to do before he went to see Bentley anyway.
‘So you don’t think Andreas is up to anything dodgy any more then?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’ Graham conceded. ‘I think his biggest fault – if it is a fault – is that he cares too passionately about steering the company to the next level. The intensity he shows in trying to live up to his own expectations and his desire to honour the memory of his parents is quite touching, really. He just needs to take it down a notch or two, for his own good, I think.’
Janet made it through the left turn at the Meadowhead roundabout without having to come to a halt, which was a rarity. They would be home in less than 10 minutes.
‘Apart from making peace with Bentley, what else is on the agenda?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s the attacks on the depot. That’s the biggie. If we’re assuming they were nothing to do with Bentley – and I think we can, pretty safely, now – we still need to establish who carried them out. You know, the more I think about the possibility that it could be tied in with whatever Yates was mixed up in, like I suggested to Andreas this morning, the more that makes sense. I’d love to know what it was Yates was up to that drove somebody to want to kill him but Andreas didn’t know and neither did Ray. He was sacked because Andreas said Yates got hostile about being accused of theft and painted himself into a corner and I got the impression from Andreas that if he’d owned up, shown a bit of contrition, he might have been given a second chance. I think it actually hurt Andreas to have to sack him. I suppose we’ll have to wait to see what the police come up with. Until they can shed more light on who killed Yates and why, it looks like we’re at a bit of a dead end, so to speak.’
Graham stretched and stifled a yawn as they turned off the next roundabout towards Dronfield. He was looking forward to that glass of wine.
16
The word soon got around. There had been a development in the murder case. A witness had come forward to say they had been driving on the road to Hathersage at around 11.30 on the Saturday night, past the lay-by where Chris Yates’s body was found early on Sunday morning. They said they saw a man getting into the passenger seat of a dark car which was pulled in behind another car on the lay-by.
Graham called up the report on The Star website to read it for himself. There was not much more that was fresh about the information other than that. It was not a major breakthrough, but the police said they were releasing the witness account in the hope that it might spark memories from other motorists in the vicinity at a similar time and prompt them to come forward too.
If the police wanted to make sure they attracted maximum publicity, they could have done worse than to employ Smudge. He was a squat man who worked in the repair shop and he had made it his duty to ensure news of the development spread quickly around the depot. Having passed on the facts as he saw them in the reception leg of his tour, Smudge was moving on to giving Zoe the benefit of his opinion.
‘I reckon they think the one who was getting into the car was the one who did it,’ he declared. ‘Either him or the driver. Maybe one of them got him talking while the other sneaked up behind him and smacked him over the head. I reckon they only meant to rob him but they botched it and hit him too hard, then they saw the car coming and panicked. They’re still trying to work out what Yatesy was doing out there, in the middle of nowhere that late at night, but I heard it was because he was into dogging.’
Zoe squinted back at him, unable to disguise her faint disgust at the latter suggestion.
‘How can you even...? Nobody has any idea what he was doing out there, so how can you...? I don’t even want to think about that.’
Smudge held up his hands, suddenly eager to establish himself as the messenger and not the perpetrator of the theory.
‘That’s only what I’ve heard.’
Zoe returned to her work, making clear her distaste and signalling that the largely one-way conversation was over.
‘Anybody who believes that bollocks should be ashamed of themselves,’ she muttered, as Smudge skulked off to try to find someone more receptive to speculate with.
Graham shook his head. He shared her irritation and not only with the suggestion that Yates might have had seedy sexual habits. This was not the first wild theory that had done the rounds. They may now have a better idea of when the murder happened but they were no closer to finding out why and that lack of knowledge had left a void which some people felt compelled to fill with Chinese whisper-type insinuation. Perhaps that was a symptom of the social media age or maybe that was just how people always have been; only now their ill-formed speculation was able to spread to a wider audience much more rapidly. People certainly appeared more impatient for information than they used to be. The demand was for instant answers and he felt sympathy for the police because the truth still took as long to establish as it ever did.
Yet, for all his sympathy, Graham too felt impatient. Having made such good headway over the previous couple of days, he was at a bit of a loose end. The me
eting with Doug Bentley was only a day away but the news update stirred guilty thoughts that he could be doing something useful in the meantime.
If there was a link between the murder and the fires, what was it? The reclusive Yates had left no clues – not at the depot, anyway.
It was such a pleasant day that Graham suggested to Janet that they take a walk by the golf course in their lunch break. It was good to escape the oppressive busyness of the industrial estate and follow the path through the woods, where birdsong masked the constant invasive hum of traffic from the Parkway and the only interruption to the brief secluded peace came in the occasional exasperated cry from the fairway of the eighth.
They walked hand-in-hand, as they habitually did, relishing how the sun cut through the canopy to pour beams of intense light on the wild flowers and dense greenery on either side of them. Janet was telling him, in more detail than was necessary, about a text conversation she had had with her sister midway through the morning and Graham was content just to listen.
‘Oh, I got you that address you asked for,’ she said, breaking the stream of her account just as she was about to tell him about an arrangement they had set to meet up on Saturday evening. She retrieved a piece of paper from her handbag and gave it to him.
‘Why do you need to know where Chris Yates lived?’
‘I was thinking I might go around there after work,’ he replied casually in a way that suggested he still might not, even though he had decided, after coming up with the idea an hour earlier, that he definitely would.
‘Nobody really knows much about him at work, even though he’s been there for years. We don’t even know if he lived alone or had a partner or what. I thought I might go around there to see if I can find anybody who knew him. Knock on a few doors maybe. He must have neighbours.’
