Hot Seat

Lap Twenty-Five

With Mathieu Schöenberger, the restaurant’s owner, acting as interpreter, I reported the car’s theft to the police. He poured us free coffee while we waited for the cops to arrive. He was very kind under the circumstances, but I think it had a lot to do with the car being hijacked from his car park. There was nothing for us to do but wait.

‘The police will be here within the hour,’ Mathieu said.

I checked my watch. That meant in twenty minutes. ‘Thanks.’

Dylan and I stared at my mobile phone on the table in front of me.

‘You’re going to have to call Rags,’ Dylan said.

I was clinging to the vain hope that the cops would pick up the car thieves in a blink of an eye and Rags wouldn’t have to know. It was a delusion I couldn’t commit to with any great faith. I sighed and picked up the phone. I scrolled through my directory and was just about to select Rags’ number when I stopped. An alternative hit me.

‘Please let it be so.’

‘What?’ Dylan said.

‘Stay here a minute.’

I went outside and punched in Claudia’s number. She answered on the second ring.

‘The car’s been stolen. Did you do it?’

‘What car? The car you’re delivering?’

Claudia sounded genuinely surprised, but I couldn’t tell for sure. She’d already proved to be an expert liar. I only had Claudia’s word there was a GPS tracker on the car. In fact, she could have been the one who’d planted it. I had no idea who to trust anymore.

‘Yes, the car I’m delivering. The one with the tracker you found today. If you took it, just tell me, because if you didn’t, I have to call Rags.’

‘Aidy, I didn’t take the car.’

‘Don’t lie to me. If the theft is your way of getting some time with the car to check it out, I get it. Just don’t keep me in the dark.’

‘Aidy, I swear I’m not lying.’

I could hear the truth in her voice. A flicker of panic singed her words.

‘Shit,’ I murmured under my breath.

‘Where are you?’ Claudia asked.

‘Strasbourg.’

‘When was the car taken?’ Claudia asked.

‘We stopped to eat, so I don’t know for sure, but it can’t be more than thirty minutes ago. I’ve called the police.’

‘OK, let me take it from ’ere. I’ll get back to you. Stay put for now. Call Rags with the news.’

She hung up on me before I could say anything else and left me out in the cold with an unenviable job to do. I dialled Rags. The phone rang and rang and I thought I was going to receive a stay of execution, but he finally picked up.

‘What is it, boy?’ he said, sounding jovial. That wasn’t going to last.

‘Rags, the car’s been stolen.’

‘What?’ The word came out as hard as flint.

‘I stopped to eat and when I came out, the car was gone.’

‘You are fucking joking, right?’ Rags’ voice rose from a growl to a bark.

‘No. I’m so sorry, Rags. The car was locked and we just stopped for a few minutes. I called the police. Hopefully, they can—’

‘Do you like fucking up?’

‘No, Rags.’

‘Do you like screwing me over?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you do a fucking outstanding job of it. You have a fantastic talent for calamity. I give you the simple job of delivering a car to impress a new sponsor and you turn it into the balls-up of the century. That’s a talent. I’m sure the UN could use you in the Middle East, because you’d give all the factions a single source of irritation and take the pressure off the rest of the world.’

I listened to the tirade. There was no point interrupting to apologize. I’d just be pouring petrol on the firestorm. I closed my eyes and let him burn himself out while the evening breeze cooled the heat of my shame.

‘You know what’s bad about this, don’t you? It isn’t the loss of the car, which is a pain in the arse all by itself, but that the car belonged to a new sponsor. First impressions count and this is one impression no one is going to forget in a hurry. Is any of this getting through to you?’

‘Yes, it is.’

Rags was silent for a long moment. All I could hear was his exhausted breathing. When he spoke again, resignation replaced the rage. ‘You really have fucked up this time.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re damn lucky you’re not here in front of me.’

I thought of Nick Ronson dangling by his duct-taped hands from an engine hoist.

‘I’m going to take care of this mess with the sponsor. You could try and impress me by handling things from where you are.’ Rags underlined his point by hanging up.

‘I’m in Strasbourg, by the way,’ I said to a dead line.

A police car pulled into the car park. I introduced myself in French and took them into the restaurant. One of the officers spoke pretty good English, certainly better than my French, but Mathieu took over the translating duties and it helped speed up proceedings.

But that all ended when we reached the ownership issue. I didn’t need Mathieu to translate the shift in body language from sympathetic to suspicious. I didn’t have any documentation on the car since everything I had was in the glove box. Driving from England to Germany to deliver a car to a man I didn’t know sounded distinctly suspect. Suddenly, I faced a sticky situation. The cops would have to take it on faith that everything I was telling them was on the up and up. I saw that I was talking myself into another jail cell and this time I was dragging Dylan with me.

I gave them the phone numbers for Rags and the sponsor in Germany. I explained that we were delivering the car and nothing more.

The cops retreated to their patrol car and Mathieu returned to his customers.

Dylan waggled his phone at me. ‘I clued Steve in just in case this goes sideways on us and we need someone to find us.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘What was the great revelation that sent you scurrying out the door?’ Dylan asked.

I looked over Dylan’s shoulder at the cops in their car talking on the phone. ‘I wondered if Claudia had the car lifted.’

‘Did she?’

I shook my head.

‘That would be too convenient,’ he said. ‘Some tosser is going to be a very happy boy if they find something is hidden in that car. Can you believe our dumb sodding luck?’

I couldn’t. What were the chances of a car under surveillance getting stolen on route to its potentially dubious destination? I stood more chance of winning the lottery. The improbability snagged my thoughts and I couldn’t shake it loose. Before I could make any more of it, the police officers returned. Both men looked grim-faced.

‘This doesn’t look good. It could be handcuff time,’ Dylan said, watching the cops approach. Then he grinned. ‘I haven’t spent a night in a French police cell before. Possibly another first picked up from hanging out with you.’

‘Never a dull moment.’

The second the cops returned, Mathieu rejoined us to offer his translation skills and support.

‘Monsieur Westlake, we have spoken to the vehicle’s owner and he has confirmed your story,’ the English-speaking cop said in such a heavy accent it squashed every word. It made me long for Claudia’s crisp tone. ‘Monsieur Schöenberger has also confirmed your account and has asked that you act as his representative here in France. OK with you?’

‘Oui.’

‘Bon. We have a report of a car fire. Can you come see?’

I nodded. That was the icing on the cake.

The cops drove us a short distance across town to a scrap of wasteland by the canal that fed into the Rhine. Firemen stood over the smoking husk of a car. We pulled up next to a fire engine and got out.

The acrid stink of burnt plastic, oil and petrol stained the air. Not even the soap powder scent of the suffocating foam used to extinguish the fire did anything to mask the stench.

The policemen conferred with the firemen as we approached the burnt-out husk. The firemen shot Dylan and me commiserating looks. As a people, we loved our cars and seeing one destroyed was never a fun sight.

We stopped a safe distance from the wreck. It was easy to tell it was a black Honda Accord under the blanket of foam sliding drunkenly off the carcass. The number plates were missing, but what were the chances of there being another black Honda Accord stolen this close to ours? The thieves had stripped the car before torching it. It sat lopsidedly on bricks, missing its wheels. The front seats were gone. The windscreen was split, but that could have been from the heat of the fire.

I circled the car. One circuit told the story of how the vandals had done their work. They’d doused the car in petrol, stuck a rag in the open petrol tank fill spout and let the flames do the rest. The fire had been total in its devastation.

A fireman popped the boot with a crowbar. Cinders replaced our overnight bags. We’d be walking about in the clothes we had on as we left France tonight.

The bonnet had been opened at some point. I peered into the engine bay. The engine was intact, although anything non-metallic wasn’t. That would include the GPS tracker if it hadn’t been removed beforehand. At least the cops would be able to identify the wreck from the chassis number.

‘Is this your car, Monsieur Westlake?’ the cop asked.

‘Right make and model. It looks like it.’

The cop nodded gravely.

Dylan wandered over to me. ‘What a mess.’

‘Give me a sec, OK?’ I pulled out my mobile and moved away from Dylan and the wreck.

‘You calling Rags?’

‘No, Claudia.’

I found myself a quiet spot and dialled her number. John Barrington answered the phone instead.

‘Is that the idiot I put my faith in?’

‘You didn’t put your faith in me. You put the success and failure of your case on someone you thought you could push around.’

‘Listen to you with your big balls swaying in the air. I don’t remember you being so tough the last time we shared face time. I suppose a few hundred miles’ separation gives you that swagger. That’s if I am that far away. I could be around the corner.’

Barrington couldn’t help himself. He had to assert himself to show who was boss.

‘So you’ve heard about the car,’ I said when he finished grandstanding.

‘You mean that you let the hottest lead we’ve had in months get stolen out from under you? Yeah, I’ve heard about that and the fact that the French police have found a burned-up wreck matching your car’s description.’

Barrington was well informed. ‘News travels fast.’

‘Bad news always does. It’s a universal constant, like morons.’

I rolled my eyes and was sad that Barrington wasn’t around to see me do it. ‘I’m standing in front of the wreckage.’

‘I’d rather you were standing in front of a car packed with drugs delivering it to a connection. Then I could spend my Sunday celebrating a trans-European drug bust. But that won’t be happening, thanks to you.’

‘Look, I’m not a hotshot Customs officer trying to rid the UK of the drug scourge. You are. If you wanted this car, you should have done something about it.’

‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you?’

‘No. I want you out of my life and the longer it takes for you to get your result, the longer I’m stuck with you. So let’s stop bitching at each other and figure out how we got sucker punched.’

‘Sucker punched? What do you mean?’ No sarcasm tinged his words.

‘The car was never meant to make it to Munich. Someone wanted all of us looking one way while they picked our pockets.’

Barrington was silent for a moment. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘They were either following or tracking the car. Claudia found a GPS tracker on it. The second we left it unattended it was swiped and none of us is the wiser as to who took it. Fate is never that cruel. The odds were too high for this to happen.’ Then the penny dropped. ‘But you already know that, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I do, but if I’m being honest, I knew only what happened after it happened. At least you’re not as dumb as I thought you were.’

That was as close to a compliment as I was going to get. ‘You wouldn’t have turned to me if you thought I was that dumb.’

I thought I could feel him grinning from his end of the phone line.

‘So what else can you tell me about this failed escapade?’

‘I don’t think the guy in Munich has anything to do with it.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Plausible deniability. I was a patsy and so was the sponsor.’

‘And Rags? Is he a member of the dumb club?’

It was my turn to be silent.

‘C’mon, Aidy. What’s in that mind of yours?’

‘In spite of our suspicions, there’s no proof that there was anything in the car.’

‘Don’t disappoint me, Aidy. You have to believe he’s involved now. I’ll do better than that. You know he’s involved.’

I did. Rags was up to his neck in something. I didn’t know what, but I’d find out.

‘By the way,’ Barrington said. ‘Claudia wants to speak to you. She says she’s got the name and address of some woman for you.’