Our House(46)

‘Right, so in terms of the car keys, might this second set have been missing for some time?’

‘Maybe. I guess.’ A thought struck. ‘You don’t think someone might have broken in and stolen it? We’ve had a burglary on the street recently.’ The community officer had mentioned this trend at the meeting, I remembered. Alison had raised the notion that you should always leave car keys out in the open, counterintuitive as it was, so as to avoid burglars ransacking the place in search of hidden keys, but the officer had cautioned against leaving them visible through a window.

‘Have you noticed any signs of forced entry?’ the detective asked.

‘No,’ I conceded. ‘But I know thieves can use wires and hooks through the letterbox, can’t they?’

‘That’s right.’ He paused. ‘Alternatively, you might simply have mislaid the key.’

I agreed that this was more likely and he asked if I’d noticed any scratches or other damage to the car over the last few weeks.

‘No, it looked the same as ever. There were some marks on the tyres from parking, you know, kerb damage, but they’ve been there for ages.’

As soon as he’d left, I googled ‘Thornton Heath car accident’, adding the news filter. Here it was: an accident on Silver Road on Friday 16th at about 6 p.m. A dark-coloured VW or Audi had been seen close to the scene.

Remembering the officer’s name, I found he was indeed a detective sergeant in the Serious Collisions Investigations Unit, which handled cases throughout south-east London and its suburbs. They must be visiting the owners of every dark-coloured VW or Audi reported stolen in South London, even those taken after the incident, like ours. That struck me as an inefficient way to investigate, but what did I know?

Don’t answer that.

#VictimFi

@crime_addict Where’s the car then? Husband involved in this crash, maybe?

@rachelb72 @crime_addict Must’ve been, that’s why he’s done a Lord Lucan

@crime_addict @rachelb72 Why no damage then? He got it fixed?

@rachelb72 @crime_addict Maybe when they finally find it, they’ll discover his rotting body in the boot . . .





Bram, Word document

At that Friday’s handover, Fi said, ‘Did you know the police thought one of us might have been involved in some car crash down in Thornton Heath a few weeks ago?’

I concealed a split-second’s paralysis. ‘They did? When did they say that?’

‘A detective came round this morning. Obviously, I checked the diary and told him neither of us used the car that day, but I guess there’s a process of elimination they have to follow, isn’t there?’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed.

‘I wondered if it was possible someone stole the keys before they took the car,’ she went on, musing. ‘But the police said that was unlikely since there’ve been no signs of a burglary. Still, we should have been more careful, Bram.’

Though taken aback by this, I saw how fortunate it was that it had been she, genuinely in the dark, who had been the one to field the police’s enquiries. Would my own responses have sounded so natural, so guileless? How appalled she would be if I told her the truth about the Audi. That I’d thought seriously about finding a dark stretch of canal, or even the Thames, and taking the handbrake off to let it roll into the water, but then I’d decided it was better to hide it in plain sight.

Contrary to my respective reports to insurer, police and her, I’d last seen our car late on Sunday night, last driven it then too. Left it in a street in Streatham with no parking restrictions, key dropped down the nearest drain. With any luck, the battery would go flat and it would sit there for months.

‘I doubt we’ll ever know what happened.’ I sighed. ‘But I really don’t think we should beat ourselves up about it. We’re still getting used to a whole new way of living. How are we supposed to know where the car keys are at any given moment?’

‘You’re right.’ The way she was looking at me, thankful for the solidarity, the shared attention to this latest aggravation, it not only flattered me, but it calmed me too.

‘We’re pretty security-conscious generally,’ I said. ‘Especially after what happened to the Ropers. And poor old Carys.’

She looked pleased that I’d remembered Carys.

I considered the issue of my ban: if the officer she had spoken to had known about it then he obviously hadn’t seen fit to divulge it. She must have explained early on that we’d split up and he’d erred on the side of diplomacy. ‘Tell the police to phone me if they have any more questions,’ I said.

I was already formulating my responses for just such a follow-up. ‘The sixteenth? Oh, that was the away-day. It was at a hotel down near Gatwick, I’d have to look up the name.’ ‘Did you drive there?’ ‘No, I took the train. There was a delay, now I think about it. I only just made it to the first session.’ Surely they wouldn’t go so far as to check the station’s CCTV footage? If so, crowds had accumulated quickly that morning and it was possible I wouldn’t be easily identifiable on the platform, which was unfortunate. On the other hand, when I’d left I’d been part of a swarm too – hidden by it, with any luck.

But what if they checked at the other end? There’d be no pictures of me hurrying through any station on the Gatwick line. ‘Where did you get off the train, Mr Lawson?’ they’d ask. I needed to google the station, I thought, check the exits. Or was it more natural to be vague – who remembered this stuff? What about CCTV at the hotel? Had cameras clocked the Audi near the collision site? And the police had number plate recognition technology, didn’t they? – oh God, could it be applied retrospectively?