‘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.’
Lap Twenty-Six
Miss Angry Renault’s name was Jenni Oglesby and she lived in a small complex of flats in Harrow, which was nowhere in the vicinity of our supposed hit and run. I wondered what tale she’d spun for Sergeant Lucas to explain her presence so far from home.
I drove out to her place on Monday afternoon. Dylan and I hadn’t gotten back from Strasbourg until Sunday night. By the time we’d finished up with the police, it was too late to catch a flight or train home. We’d stayed the night in a hotel and first thing in the morning, we grabbed a train to Paris, then took the Eurostar into London.
Since Dylan had to go back to work at Ragged, Steve came with me for backup and to be a witness. I didn’t want Jenni claiming I’d done something else to her. We arrived outside her place at two p.m. I tried her doorbell, but didn’t get a reply, so we parked across the street and bedded in until she came home.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Steve said. ‘You’re not meant to have any contact with her. If she tells the plod, you’re buggered. Everything that’s happened will be small beer by comparison.’
‘She won’t,’ I said, although it was more wishful thinking than a certainty.
‘How do you know?’
‘She lied about me running her off the road. That makes her moral compass a little distorted. She wants something.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She grassed me up to Chloe Mercer and Chloe spilled the beans to George Easter. It was unnecessary. The police are all over me and your insurance is likely to pay her out. Ruining my name doesn’t get her anything more.’
‘Other than making you desperate. And coming here is the mark of a desperate man.’
I knew coming here was a risk, but it was one worth taking, especially if I could expose Jenni as a fraud. I thought Steve would understand. ‘Are you saying we should go?’
Steve nodded. ‘Yeah, I am. This can do you more harm than good. She might still have something up her sleeve and there’s no upside from you confronting her. If she runs to the plod, then you really are screwed.’
Steve made a lot of sense, but I couldn’t listen to him. It still stuck in my throat that Jenni had the upper hand. I couldn’t let her get away with screwing me.
‘I have the element of surprise working for me right now. If I wait for her to do whatever she’s planning, I’ll be on the back foot. At least by confronting her today, I’ll rob her of any control.’
‘Aidy, drive away.’
‘I can’t. You can go, but I’m staying.’
Steve sighed. ‘If you stay, I stay.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Just thank me by keeping yourself out of a jail cell.’
It was something I hadn’t managed to do in the past.
Jenni arrived home just before five o’clock. She was driving a very new, shiny Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta, while not earth shattering, was a bump up from the clapped-out Renault I’d seen her driving before.
‘That’s her,’ I said.
The flats came with a small parking area in the rear, but she had to walk back to the street to let herself into her place. The second she drove towards the parking area, I jumped from my car and Steve climbed out after me.
‘No, you stay here,’ I said. ‘She might look at you and think I’ve brought a heavy along with me.’
‘Am I that scary to look at?’
‘No, but I want to look vulnerable.’ I held out my arms. ‘I’m desperate, right?’
Steve brought out his mobile. ‘I’m getting your meeting down on video. She said you wrecked her car last time. I don’t want her saying you wrecked her face this time.’
My stomach clenched at that thought.
I jogged across the street and waited for her by her front door.