‘Go on, then. I’ll buy it.’
‘I have a strong feeling that the reason I thought I knew the name David Rogers was that he was involved in a scandal some time back. Normally I don’t pay attention to scurrilous gossip, but when it’s a doctor that’s involved, the old antennae tend to twitch all on their own.’
‘Scurrilous, eh?’
‘If it was the same man. Something about furgling a female patient.’
‘That sounds like Rogers, from what we know of him. Could have furgled for England.’
‘Now, I’m not certain, mind,’ Freddie warned. ‘As I said, it’s a pretty common name. But worth checking on?’
‘Certainly. Thanks Freddie. Any idea when it happened?’
‘Sorry, old horse. A longish time, anyway. But it was in all the papers. Bit of a cause celeb at the time. You ought to be able to track it down. If it was him. And not Roger David or any of the other combinations.’
‘Right.’
A few minutes later, when he switched off his light, he saw there was still a light in the CID office next door, so he went out that way, and found Hollis still there, office-managering away at his desk. He looked up. ‘I’m just about finished, guv. Putting a coupla last things to bed.’
‘Fine. I’m just going home myself.’ Slider told him what Freddie Cameron had said. ‘The quickest way to get a handle on it might be to put Rogers’s fingerprints through the system. There may have been a criminal investigation at the time. If not, then it will mean trawling newspapers or going through the BMA, which will take a lot longer.’ These professional bodies were always reluctant to part with information, especially if the business had been hushed up. And if Rogers was still doctoring, it must have been. But if there had been a case, even if it had been dropped, his fingerprints would still be on record.
‘I’ll get on to it, guv,’ Hollis said.
‘No need to worry now. Tomorrow will do. Rogers isn’t going anywhere.’
And neither, Slider thought as he headed down the stairs to his car, was the case.
McLaren and Fathom went together to Embry’s scrapyard, in case of trouble, and they went early, in the hope of getting the owners to themselves. Stanmore was at the outer edge of London: the A410 – which bore various names along its length but was called the Uxbridge Road at that point – was like a boundary line, with near solid suburban street development below it, and countryside above. Here, on the map, lanes petered out like streams running into sand, and buried their ends in farms, woods, public open spaces, sports fields and the like. So there was plenty of room for a large scrapyard to be hidden behind a fringe of poplar trees – probably put in at the urging of the locals, because a scrapyard was not the most beautiful thing to have on your horizon.
As well as the trees, Embry’s yard was fenced around with twenty-foot high steel railings topped with razor wire. Behind lay an automotive Goodwin Sands. The wrecks, once gleaming with new paint and the hopes and desires of their owners, lay sadly rusting in rows and stacked rudely on top of each other, awaiting the stripping of their useful parts and the final appointment with the crusher on the far side. Appropriately, a crow perched on top of the crane was yarking in a desolate, Edgar Allen Poe sort of way as McLaren and Fathom got out of their car. Both being geezers to the core they did not notice the sad poetry of the place, and the only comment voiced was Fathom’s: ‘Wonder if I could get a dynamo here for me Dad’s old MG?’
Dogs began barking as they walked towards the hut which housed the office. One was a Rottweiler chained to a kennel at one end of the hut; the other was a Dobermann on a chain held by the man who emerged from the office, and stood just outside waiting for them. He was squat and neckless, with a boxer’s arms and shoulders, a squashed nose and pitiful ears. His brow was low, and made lower by his ferocious scowl, and he had an old scar down one cheek which had puckered slightly and pulled up one corner of his mouth into what looked like a cynical smile. All in all, a face a little girl wouldn’t want to kiss goodnight. The eyes under the scowl were cold and grey as lead, and they clocked McLaren and Fathom effortlessly as coppers.
‘What do you lot want?’ he asked, as unfriendly as his dog, which had given up barking for snarling.
‘Just a little chat,’ McLaren said. ‘You Embry?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Come to do you a favour.’
Embry snorted. ‘Be the day!’
‘Reckon you’ve had a bit of trouble with theft.’
‘I ain’t reported nothing. Where are you from? You ain’t locals.’
‘Reckon you have had a theft,’ McLaren insisted. Fathom was wandering away a few steps, looking around, which was giving Embry trouble keeping his eyes on the two of them at once. ‘Matter of a number plate. Comes back to a wrote-off Astra you got here.’
‘My business is legit, ’undred per cent,’ Embry said. ‘Had your lot crawling all over the place at the start, making sure of that. And tell your mate not to go wandering off. These ain’t the only two dogs I got.’
‘Well, if the number plate weren’t stolen, you sold it,’ McLaren said. ‘And that means you been a naughty boy.’
Embry’s stance shifted very slightly. ‘I got scads a people coming in here looking for spares. I sell ’em legitimate. Bound to be the odd nut and bolt took on the side. Can’t watch every bastard all the time.’
‘That’s why you got all these cameras, ain’t it, mate?’ McLaren said, gesturing round to the four CCTV cameras mounted on poles in the four corners of the yard.
‘They don’t work. Just for show – try an’ scare some of the thieving fuckers off.’ He looked aggrieved. ‘And a fat lot o’ use you lot are. Had an OHC off a Porsche nicked last week. You know what that’s worth? Fuck knows how he got it out without me seeing. Know who it was but I can’t prove it. No point telling you lot. You don’t do anything when I do report a theft. Useless bunch o’ tossers, ain’t you?’
‘Oh, now, you’ve hurt my feelings,’ McLaren said. ‘I come here to do you a favour. Might not feel like being so kind now.’
‘Favour! That’ll be the day.’
‘This Astra. We’d like to have a look at it.’ He held out a copy of the scrappage form.
Embry’s granite face did not flicker. ‘Have to look it up. Can’t remember every wreck in the place.’
They followed him into the office, where McLaren noted another security camera, up near the ceiling in the corner, covering the door and the wooden counter. The red monitor light on its base came on as they walked in, indicating it was either motion-or heat-sensitive. As Embry had his back to them, going to a filing cabinet, McLaren nudged Fathom and drew his attention to it.
Embry drew out a folder, opened it on the counter, and ran a finger down a column, comparing with the piece of paper. His finger stopped and he looked up.
‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Went in the crusher Monday.’
‘How convenient,’ McLaren said. ‘And what about the plates?’
Embry scowled. ‘They’d a been on it. Crush the ’ole lot together.’
‘Then how do you account for ’em being clocked on a BMW in Shepherd’s Bush Monday morning?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘We know you sold them plates.’
‘I don’t sell number plates,’ Embry said, calling their bluff.
‘Rented ’em, same thing. Either way, they come out of here and come back in here, ended in the crusher. Car was tracked all the way. So you can make it easy on yourself or you can make it hard.’
Embry said nothing, but he looked at McLaren a touch more receptively. The Dobermann had stopped snarling, and was sitting down, looking warily from face to face. Now it sneezed, rubbed its nose on its wrist, and sighed.