Читать книгу The Returned Dead - Rafe Kronos - Страница 8

I parked in the area reserved for customers, picked up the folder from the passenger seat, got out and locked the car. I felt a slight lifting of my sombre mood: at least I was starting a new inquiry. Maybe someone here would put me on the path of discovering what was going on.

I stood by my car, apparently hesitating, then I let my attention fix on the row of shiny new cars along the forecourt. I walked over to the third in the row, a dark green Mondeo, peered through the driver’s side window and began to count. I’d reached thirty-eight when I heard the hurrying footsteps.

“Lovely, isn’t she? You’ll enjoy her, you really will, she goes like a bomb and costs almost nothing to run.”

He sounded more like a pimp recommending a Thai mail order bride than a car salesman. I straightened and turned to look at him. He was in his mid-forties, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a tie spattered with Ford logos. He was plump and sweating slightly and he was looking at me with an almost fawning air. Well, at least his age was promising: he could have worked there in Rankin’s time.

“Here, let me open her up, you can slip inside and see how you feel.” I shouldn’t have thought about Thai brides.

“Lovely,” he repeated.

He was doing it all wrong. Excellent: the worse they are, the easier it is to manipulate them. He was being far too pushy; a better salesman would have tried to discover something about a potential customer before starting his pitch. This one was as eager as a teenager about to have his first shag: so much hurry was bound to leave at least one person unsatisfied.

He came closer and stuck out his hand. I guess he’d been told it was important to make bodily contact. What he hadn’t understood was it was best to wait till he was sure this would not annoy the customer. However I took his hand and shook it; it was as soft and moist as cheap sliced bread.

“Geoff Prentice,” he said and gave me a mechanical smile that went only half way up his face. I’d seen ventriloquists’ dummies do it better.

“Mike Brown,” I lied, looking him in the eyes and nodding as if I was pleased by our encounter.

“So, do you fancy a test drive?”

“Perhaps later. Actually,” I leant slightly towards him to create a sense of intimacy, perhaps even a feeling of mild conspiracy, “actually I’m here on another matter. Is there some place where we can have a quiet word?”

He looked uneasy for a moment. I wondered what he feared: did he think I was a debt collector or had he been working a fiddle and think he’d been found out? Then he forced another smile as he tried to convince himself that there was nothing to be worried about.

“Let’s go inside. We’ve got a new customer lounge; it’s very comfy, very, extremely so.” Well, he was a salesman and it wasn’t his job to undersell anything about Beasley Motors. “We can talk there. I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea or coffee, fresh brewed of course, and we have excellent shortbread biscuits, really excellent.”

He spoke proudly, as if buying decent biscuits was on a par with carrying out a heart transplant.

“I’d like that,” I lied. He seemed slightly reassured.

He led me into the boasted area and I let him get me a coffee. It wasn’t bad, though not as good as the stuff I make. When I refused a biscuit he looked like I’d run over his dog.

I glanced around as if checking we could not be overheard. “The thing is, Geoff -- you don’t mind if I call you Geoff, do you? – I work for a group of insurance companies.” Well, in a way it was true: I am occasionally hired by insurance companies. “I’m trying to track down a number of people who’ve been buying cars. I can’t go into the detail. I’m sure you’ll understand it has to be kept confidential till the investigation is complete, but let’s just say they have caused certain problems with loan financing. Recently we’ve received info. that they may have been in this area, doing a sort of recce. before approaching dealerships like this one.”

He nodded eagerly: I could see he was relaxing now that he realised that my visit was not about him.

“Glad to help, Mike, glad to.” He tapped the side of his nose and winked; for a moment he looked like Arthur Daley. I wondered briefly if Beasleys used ‘Minder’ in the ‘how-not-to-do-it’ part of their training programme and he’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

“Great, Geoff, thanks. I’ve got some photos here,” I had put the folder on the coffee table that was laden with brochures about various Ford models. Now I pulled it towards me and took out the A4 sized prints that Kate had prepared for me. They were all pictures of men, some were strangers secretly photographed in the street, some had been taken from our files. One showed our new client; Kate had taken it from the video recording.

“Please have a look at them and tell me if you’ve seen any of the people in them or even if any of them has been asking about buying a car.” That was a lot of ‘thems’ but I thought he’d get the idea.

I began to pass the photos across, one by one. He stared hard at the first then shook his head emphatically, keen to show me he was cooperating. The next two got the same treatment. I sensed he was getting disappointed because he had nothing to tell me: everyone wants to be a detective. I blame it on TV.

The fourth one showed our client and I tried to stay calm as I passed it to him. He looked at it for a second and I saw his eyes widen. He stared at it for what seemed like a very long minute. Finally he gave a brief bark of laughter. I had no difficulty appearing interested in his reaction.

“You’ve recognise him? He’s been in recently?” I made my voice eager.

He laughed again and shook his head. “No, no, it’s just…” He grinned, “It’s just that this one looks very like my old boss, though his face is a bit fatter and he looks, I don’t know, well, older, I suppose. Yes, that’s it: the man in this photo looks very like Mr Rankin, only he’s several years older.”

“Let me get this clear. Has the man in the photo been in here? Have you seen him recently?”

“No, definitely not.”

“But you say it looks like someone you used to work for, is that it? He was your old boss?”

“Right, Jack Rankin. I was a store-man then, before I moved into sales.”

“Where was this?”

“Here. This used to be Rankin Motors.”

I pretended to think for a moment or two then I said slowly, “So why can’t the man in the photo be your old boss?”

He laughed again, “Because he’s dead.”

“Ah,” I said and I pretended to think some more. Then I asked casually, “so when did he die?”

“Oh, seven or eight years back.”

I looked round. “And you say he used to run this place?”

“Yes, it was a family business then, it was Rankin Motors.”

I smiled, “Well, I guess that proves it: if he’s dead he can’t be the man in the photo.” Then, as if I’d just thought of it, I asked, “I don’t suppose he had a twin brother or a close relative that looked just like him?” I’d already wondered if that might be part of the explanation of Baxendale’s mad story.

“No, Jack was an only child and I don’t think he had any other family, apart from his father and mother of course, but they died a few years before him.”

It was time to leave the subject of Rankin. I showed him the other photos one by one. He looked carefully at each but told me he had never seen any of the men depicted in them.

I gathered up the photos, slid them into the file and leaned back into the over-soft seat they provided for customers, presumably to make it hard for them to get up and leave until they’d agreed to buy a car.

“Thanks for your help, Geoff; at least I’ve been able to eliminate your firm from my inquiries.” I looked round the lounge; at the other end it opened into the show room. Three highly polished new cars sat there, lit by bright spotlights, waiting to entice buyers. “This looks a pretty good place,” I commented casually. He rose like a hungry salmon to the bait.

“And we provide a terrific service, real five star, top of the range.” He was still hoping I might want to buy a car.

“So did Beasley buy the firm after your Mr Rankin died?”

“Yes, about six months after. This is their first outlet in England; they have dealerships in Scotland but they wanted to get into England.”

I wanted to extract more info. about Rankin without questioning him directly; I did not want to do anything to make him suspicious. “So which outfit do you prefer working for?”

The question seemed to make him uncertain. After a while he said, very carefully, “Well, Beasley are a much bigger company, of course, so they – we -- have more resources. Since they took over we’ve upped our game. Now we’ve got even better quality control, higher service targets and we’re getting even greater customer satisfaction feedback.”

It was obvious that the phrases had been hammered into him at training sessions.

He smiled and for the first time the smile seemed entirely natural. “But working for Jack was more personal, more direct, if you follow me.” He leaned forward, “And it was more interesting in some ways. We all liked Jack. He was a very smart bloke – in many ways.”

I gave him an inquiring look.

“Very smart in business, and personally too. Dressed very well, always very keen to be presentable, liked to be smart for the ladies.” For a moment his face twisted into a leer before it resumed its normal doughy expression. “He even used to have – what do you call them – you know, when you get your finger nails tidied up and polished?”

“Manicures?”

“Yeah, that’s it. He had a manicure every week. And he always spent a lot on making sure his hair looked good.”

He gave a wink. “We all knew why. There was always something going with young Jack, he was a bit of a lad. No harm in it, but he did put it about. Always had a bit on the side, always at it, if you follow me.”

Now this was interesting. I winked back and smiled: we were two men of the world sharing a joke.

“He liked the ladies, did he?”

“Well, he did put it about,” he repeated. Then he said, “Funny, I hadn’t thought about it for years but it came up again a few weeks back. A bloke – a sort of private investigator – came round asking questions. He said his client was getting divorced from his missus. She’d been unfaithful for years and he’d finally had enough. Apparently the husband thought she might have been one of Jack’s birds. He wanted to be able to prove to the divorce court that she’d been at it for a long, long time. So this investigator bloke wanted to know if I could tell him anything relevant”

“And did you?”

“Not really, no. Well, I mean, it was all a long time ago and Jack’s dead so I just told him I knew Jack had a lot of lady friends but I didn’t know anything much about any of them. I wasn’t going to say anything more, I mean, the man’s dead. All water under the bridge, you know. He didn’t get anything from me, not a thing. Best that way, eh? Least said, soonest mended.” He touched the side of his nose again.

I was instantly alerted by this mention of another investigator and I wanted to know more. “A divorce investigator? Good Lord. I always imagine those blokes wear dirty raincoats, smoke roll-ups and smell of stale sweat, all a bit grubby if you know what I mean,” I said as casually as I could. Well, a lot of the people in the business are exactly like that.

“Yeah, yeah, I expect so,” he laughed, “though not this one. He was quite smartly dressed really, though he looked more like a jockey than anything. Still I suppose it might help if you’re so small: it’d help you slip in and out of places when you’re snooping.” He smiled broadly at his own wit.

I smiled back to make him feel relaxed then fished for a bit more. “Good Lord, he wasn’t called Billings by any chance, was he? One of the insurance companies I work for used to employ a little bloke called Billings who went private.”

“Nah. He said his name was Eves.”

I wondered if that was his real name; somehow I doubted it.

“Obviously not my man. So this Jack Rankin, was he married?”

He suddenly realised he might have said too much about Rankin’s personal affairs and tried to back-track. “Well, he did get married,” he said, leaving out any detail. Then, as if he’d just seen an open door he could escape through, he added quickly, “But then his wife died. And then he died: heart attack.” He seemed to think this would put an end to our discussion.

I decided I’d learned all I could for the moment. If I asked any more questions he’d become suspicious. I thanked him for his help and assured him if I ever decided to buy a new car I’d come to him first. I pocketed the card he offered me, drove away and parked in a lay-by. I needed to absorb the severe shock I had just received.

Against all my expectations Prentice had immediately identified the photo of the man who’d hired us as Jack Rankin. His unhesitating identification supported our client’s impossible story. I still couldn’t see how our man could be the dead Rankin but on Geoff Prentice’s evidence he was. And if he really was Rankin then had someone turned him into Baxendale? If so, how?

When I set out from the office I’d thought I would destroy Baxendale’s story as soon as I started digging. It hadn’t happened. Kate’s findings about the doctor and Prentice’s identification of the man in the photo were doing exactly the opposite. I had a growing feeling that things were going wrong.

Since nothing was making sense there was only one way forward: I would check another part of Baxendale/Rankin’s story. I turned the car and headed for what our client claimed had been his old home.