Our House(42)

Four years! I couldn’t survive four days.





23


‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:27:12

Before I tell you about the car, you have to understand something. You have to understand that none of these things looked related. Unlucky things happen all the time; it doesn’t mean you should suspect some larger evil – that would make you one of those conspiracy theorist nut jobs or just plain egocentric. So when Bram told me the car had been stolen, I just thought the car had been stolen.

I was the one who noticed it was gone. It was the Tuesday after the weekend of the dog show and I’d just got home from work. I needed to pick Harry up from a playdate on the other side of Alder Rise, but I couldn’t find the Audi anywhere on Trinity Avenue. I phoned Bram, who was on his way back from work, his train about to pull into Alder Rise Station.

‘Have you used the car since the weekend? Where did you park it?’

‘I haven’t driven for ages. When did you last use it?’

I cast my mind back. ‘I went to fill up with petrol at Sainsbury’s on Sunday afternoon, then I parked up by the high street.’

‘Then that’s where it must still be.’

‘It’s not. I’ve walked up and down twice and I can’t see it.’

‘I’ll come and help you look,’ Bram offered.

‘No, don’t worry.’ I avoided proposals to meet outside the agreed times. ‘I’ll borrow Mum’s car, she’s here with Harry. I’ll have a proper look later when I’ve got more time.’

But he beat me to it, phoning an hour later to say, ‘You’re right, the car’s nowhere on Trinity Avenue or any of the usual streets.’

‘Well, I definitely parked up by the corner, just around from the florists.’

‘Then I think it must have been stolen,’ he said.

‘Seriously? How can you do that without the key?’

At the meeting at Merle’s house, the community officer had warned of the ease with which thieves could steal keyless cars, but ours was old enough to use traditional keys to start the ignition.

‘I don’t know,’ Bram said. ‘I’ll ask the police. Have you got both sets of keys there?’

I went to check. ‘There’s only one in the dish.’

‘What about the other set? Would you mind looking in your bag?’

I rummaged through my handbag, laptop bag and any likely coat pockets, but there were no car keys.

‘Okay,’ Bram said, ‘I’ll say they’ve been mislaid.’

‘Of all the cars on the street, it had to be ours! Why didn’t they take the Youngs’ new Range Rover? Do you need me to help with the police?’

‘No, I’ll take care of it,’ he said. ‘I’ll handle the insurance claim as well, and let you know when a courtesy car is coming.’

‘Thank you.’ I certainly wasn’t going to insist on taking over this most tedious of projects. In spite of the co-operative nature of the bird’s nest, I still kept mental tabs on who did what and since the car was one of Bram’s few areas of sole responsibility, I wasn’t about to relieve him of it.

More fool me.

The courtesy car provided by the insurance company arrived on Thursday morning. I huffed a bit when it transpired that the paperwork had to be signed by Bram because the policy was in his name, but in the end we managed to catch him on his way to the station and it wasn’t such a big deal.


Bram, Word document

Days went by without any further contact from my tormentor, or tormentors – having thrown her hat into the ring with Mike, Wendy had presumably granted him leadership of their blackmail campaign. But already I knew better than to hold my breath.

As for the phone he’d given me, I treated it like a grenade. When at Trinity Avenue I kept it in a locked file and when at the flat I wedged it behind a stack of tins in a kitchen cupboard, as if at any time expectant of an armed raid. As if a simple locking mechanism or a barrier of tinned lentils would save me.

When the next message came, early on Thursday morning, I fully expected it to announce a new figure: either lower because they understood I really didn’t have any money or higher because that was what happened in movies when an opening bid was treated with disrespect.

Instead, it contained another link, this time to the site of a national tabloid:

- Take a look at this . . .

The article was nothing to do with motoring offences or the Silver Road incident, but about a couple in West London whose house had been sold without their knowledge by fraudsters, Russian Mafia or some such, an elaborate scam involving identity theft and a criminally negligent conveyancing solicitor. A man and woman in their sixties were pictured outside a Victorian townhouse, with the caption: ‘The Morrises clung onto their beloved property only because the Land Registry smelled a rat.’

Mike must have set up the phone to receive notifications when I opened his messages, because his next came a thoughtful fifteen minutes after I’d read the first:

- Interesting, don’t you think?

- Not particularly. What’s it got to do with anything?

- Meet me at the Swan at 6.30 and I’ll enlighten you.





‘Enlighten you’ – pompous knob. The Swan was the pub nearest my office. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was that he knew where I worked, since he seemed to know everything else about me.