Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(28)

Peter closed his eyes and conjured up that image of his mother as a young woman, perched in front of the mirror at her nightstand, head tipped back as he daubed her with perfume. He reached down and placed a hand under the waistband of his trousers.

Together again. Me and Mum. Together. A new life.





13

Kate came off the motorway junction and felt her heart beat faster. She glanced across at Tristan, who was navigating on his mobile phone. Very quickly they were driving through moorland, and the road was covered by thick trees on both sides.

“Take this next right,” he said as Kate slowed and they passed an old-fashioned red phone box next to a field of sheep, who scattered at the sight of the car. After a few minutes there was a sign on the right for NINE ELMS WRECKER’S YARD. They took the turn and bounced down a muddy potholed track surrounded by trees and fields and some derelict old houses.

Kate suddenly felt anticipation and excitement. She’d spent so long in the comfortable world of academia, and now she was back out in the real world. The track curved to the left and then came out into a huge muddy yard, which seemed to stretch out into the distance with piles and piles of wrecked cars. Several puddles sprayed up mud on the windscreen.

“This place is huge,” said Kate. She heard the sound of a fire bell ringing on and off and stopped, winding down her window. “I bet that’s their office.”

It carried on ringing, and she followed the sound, and at the next crossroads between piles of old cars, she took a left. It led down past a long row of rickety shipping containers. A skeletal Christmas tree sat at an angle on one of the roofs, next to a blow-up doll dressed in a Santa outfit, a cigar poking out of its obscenely open mouth. When they reached the end of the row of shipping containers, it opened out to a rough-looking parking area, next to a portable. A faded red sign on the front read: CASH ONLY. NO CARDS!!!!

The windows were spattered in mud, and Kate could hear a radio inside playing “Love Is All Around” by Wet Wet Wet.

She stopped the car.

“What should we say?” asked Kate.

“I’m your son. I’m a bit of a boy racer, I wrote off my car and forgot my Saint Christopher necklace in the glove compartment. It’s probably gone, but we want to take a look,” he said.

“Did you just come up with that?” asked Kate, impressed.

“I was cooking it up as you drove.” He grinned.

“That’s good. Do you want to take the lead, then?”

“Okay.”

She parked the car next to a dirty truck. Straw had been lain on the ground to soak up the mud, and they picked their way across it to the office and knocked.

The door was opened by an older man wearing faded blue tracksuit bottoms spattered in mud and paint and an equally grubby thick fleece and vest. He had scraps of long, wild hair clinging to his scalp and a bushy gray beard. He squinted at Kate, giving her the once-over, and then Tristan.

“Can I help you?” He had a strong Scottish accent. Tristan gave him the spiel about the crashed car.

“You’ll not find something like that,” he said, gesturing to the piles of cars stretching away. “The gypsies pick these cars over like locusts. My lads are under pain of death to take anything, but you can’t police them.”

“Would it help if we have a number plate to put in your system?” asked Kate. She was prepared to give a fake one to bolster their story. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.

“That’s ma filing system!” he snorted, expelling smoke from his mouth and nostrils and tipping his head back to show an old grubby landline on a desk and a thick yellow ledger where the pages were curling up.

Kate turned to Tristan. “It’s your bloody fault for crashing your car! That necklace was from your grandma!” she shouted, hoping he would take her cue.

“It was an accident! I didn’t see that car stop at the traffic lights.”

“Because you were eyeing up that girl coming out of Tesco!” cried Kate, enjoying their bit of role-play.

The old man watched them, picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue.

“I thought it was Sarah, Mum, and she said she was too ill to come out that day.”

“It was probably because of Sarah you took it off. I told you not to let her wear it!”

The old man put up a grubby hand. “All right, all right. When was it, yer wee bump in the car?”

“It was a crash, and about five weeks ago,” said Kate. “He rear-ended a lorry at a traffic light. The whole front was crumpled. It was a red Fiat.”

“You see the yard. We’ve got sections,” said the old man, demonstrating with the flat of his hand. “See back there, they’re all from the last two months. Your car might be here. Although you shouldn’t be going inside a car what’s piled up . . . It’s more than my job’s worth to let you . . .”

He licked his lips and looked at Kate beadily. The cheeky old goat wanted money. She rummaged in her bag and took out a twenty-pound note. The old man took it, rubbing it between his fingers gleefully.

“You’ve got an hour, until my boss comes. If anything happens, you’re on your own. Get your mother to call fer an ambulance . . . I don’t want the police here again.”

“What do you mean again? Is it cos of those gypsies?” asked Tristan.