‘I hope you don’t mind, Mr Barclay, but my colleague is a trainee who is supposed to be learning the tricks of the trade,’ she said loudly. ‘I’d like her to sit in on our consultation, unless you have any objections?’
‘N-no,’ Richard stammered, looking bewildered.
I stepped into the room and the sergeant closed the door firmly behind me.
Simultaneously, Richard said, ‘I don’t understand,’ and Ruth growled softly, ‘I should walk out of here right now and leave you to it.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t not. It’s too important. But look on the bright side; if I can blag my way into the secure interview room of a police station, aren’t you glad you’ve got me on the team?’ I added an apologetic smile.
Before Ruth could find an answer for that particular bit of cheek, Richard said plaintively, ‘But I don’t understand what you’re doing here, Brannigan.’
‘I’m here because you need help, Richard. I know you spend most of your time on another planet, but here on earth, it’s considered to be a pretty serious offence to drive around in a stolen car with enough crack to get half Manchester out of their heads,’ I told him.
‘Look, I know it sounds like I’m in deep shit. But it’s not like that.’ He ran a hand through his hair and frowned. ‘I keep trying to tell everybody. It wasn’t a stolen car. It was our car. The one we bought in Bolton on Tuesday.’
Chapter 4
Before I could pick the bones out of that, Ruth interrupted. ‘Let’s just hold everything right there. Kate, you are here on sufferance. I, on the other hand, am here because Richard asked me to be. I’ve got a job to do and I intend to do it, in spite of your interference. So let me ask my questions, and then if there’s anything we haven’t covered, you can have your turn.’
It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an instruction. I knew what I’d done was bang out of order. I’d taken a big risk on the strength of my friendship with Ruth, and I didn’t want to risk damaging those bonds any further. Besides, I like watching people who are really good at what they do. ‘That’s absolutely fine with me,’ I said.
‘You mean she really isn’t meant to be here?’ Richard asked, his grin irrepressible even in the face of Ruth’s frown.
‘If you weren’t facing such serious charges, I’d have bounced her out of the door. It didn’t seem like a good time to generate even more suspicion on the part of the police. Now, Richard, let’s get to it. I don’t have all night.’ Ruth picked up her pencil and started to write. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. What happened tonight?’
Richard looked uncertain. ‘Well, the beginning isn’t tonight. I mean, depending on what you mean, the beginning’s either Tuesday night or three weeks ago.’
It was my turn to grin. I didn’t envy Ruth her task. I love him dearly, but the only time Richard can tell a story in a straight line from beginning to end is when he’s sat in front of a word processor with the prospect of a nice little earner at the end of the day.
Ruth squeezed the bridge of her nose. ‘Maybe you could give me the short version, and I’ll stop you when I don’t understand something.’
‘It’s this job Kate’s got on. I’ve been helping her out with it. We have to buy these cars, you see, and then we give them back to the car company.’ Richard paused hopefully.
Ruth’s grey eyes swivelled round and fixed on me. ‘Perhaps you’d like to elaborate…?’
I nodded. ‘My clients are the finance arm of the Leo Motor Company. They suspect some dealerships of committing fraud. It’s our job to provide them with evidence, so Richard and I have been posing as a married couple, buying cars with money supplied by Leo, who then take the cars back from us,’ I said.
‘Thanks. So, you’ve been buying these cars. What happened on Tuesday night?’ she asked.
‘We’d picked up this really ace motor, the Gemini turbo super coupé,’ Richard said enthusiastically. ‘Anyway, I had to go into town, and I decided to treat myself and drive the coupé, since we’d only got it for a day or two. Then when I came out of the club, the car was gone. So I came home and reported it stolen to the police.’
Ruth looked up from her pad. ‘Did they send anyone round?’
‘Yeah, a copper came round about an hour later and I gave him all the details,’ Richard said.
‘And I informed my client first thing on Wednesday morning, if that’s any help,’ I added.
This time Ruth didn’t scowl at me. She just made another note and said, ‘So what happened next?’
Richard took off his glasses and stared up at the ceiling. A line appeared between his brows as he focused his memory. ‘I went into town about nine tonight. I had to meet a couple of women in the Paradise Factory. They’re the singers in a jazz fusion band, and they’ve just signed their first record deal. I’m doing a piece on them for one of the glossies. It was too noisy in the Factory to hear ourselves talk, so we left and went round to Manto’s.’ Trust Richard to spend his evening in the trendiest café bar in the North West. Looking at his outfit, I was surprised the style police had let him in. ‘We stayed till closing time,’ he went on. ‘The girls were going on to the Hacienda, but I didn’t fancy it, so I went off to get my car. I’d parked it off Portland Street, and I was walking past the gardens on Sackville Street when I saw the car.’ He put his glasses back on and looked expectantly at Ruth.
‘Which car, Richard?’ Ruth asked patiently.
‘The coupé,’ he said, in the injured tones of someone who thinks they’ve already made themselves abundantly clear. Poor misguided soul.
‘You saw the car that you had reported stolen in the early hours of Wednesday morning?’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Only, I wasn’t sure right away if it was the same one. It was the right model and the right colour. but I couldn’t see if it was the right registration number. It had trade plates on, you see.’
‘Trade plates,’ Ruth repeated as she scribbled. I was intrigued. Any self-respecting car thief would have smacked fake plates on a stolen car right away. I couldn’t for the life of me see why they’d use the red and white plates garages use to shift untaxed cars from one place to another. It was just asking to be noticed.
‘Yeah, trade plates,’ Richard said impatiently. ‘Anyway, I went over to this car, and I lifted up the trade plate on the front, and it was the same reg as the one that got nicked on Tuesday night,’ Richard said triumphantly. He put his glasses on and grinned nervously at both of us. ‘It’s going to be OK, isn’t it?’ he added.
Ruth nodded. ‘We’ll get it sorted out, Richard. Now, are you absolutely certain that this was the same car?’
‘I still had the keys on my key-ring,’ he said. ‘It had one of those little cardboard tags on it with the number of the car, so I wasn’t just relying on my memory. It was the identical number. Besides, the key I had opened the car, and there was still one of my tapes in the cassette. Isn’t that proof enough?’
‘Somehow, I don’t think the point at issue is going to be the car,’ I muttered quietly. Ruth gave me a look that would have curdled a piña colada.
‘Did you call the police and tell them you’d found the car?’ Ruth asked.
‘Well, I figured that if I wandered off to look for a phone, the guy that had nicked it could easily have had it away again while I was busy talking to the Dibble. So I thought I’d just repo it myself and call the cops when I got home,’ Richard explained. ‘It wasn’t so unreasonable. Even I had to concede that.’
‘What did you do next?’ Ruth said.
‘Well, I did what any reasonable person would have done,’ Richard said. My heart sank. ‘I took the trade plates off and cobbed them in the gutter.’