‘The DS21, that’s the one with the swivelling headlights, isn’t it?’ asked Sergeant Hayes, looking over the completed form. I’d finally made it to Manvers Street police station.
‘It is.’ It was. The DS had four headlights, two of which turned left and right as you turned the wheel, lighting your way around sharp bends.
‘Probably joyriders, Honeysett. If you’re lucky then they didn’t set fire to it at the end of the night.’ He flashed me a grin that bared his white but uneven teeth.
‘I didn’t think joyriders would be interested in a thirty-year-old left-hand drive. And why are we calling them joyriders? They’re damn car thieves and I don’t feel any joy.’
‘The joy’s all theirs. Until we catch up with them, that is. We’re allowed to ram them now to stop them, like the Americans. They call it the PIT manoeuvre,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Ram them? I don’t want you to ram them, it’s a classic car!’ I protested.
‘I’ve seen your car, it’s a tatty old heap, Honeysett, and I’m sure the MOT on it is dodgy. If we do find it we’ll make sure it’s roadworthy before returning it to you.’
That’s the problem if you’re on grunting terms with the Old Bill, they start taking liberties. My relationship with Avon and Somerset’s finest had always been a little strained. Hardly surprising since our interests often overlapped uncomfortably. But unlike many other private investigators I wasn’t an ex-police officer and so hadn’t got a lot of friends on the inside on whom I could rely to feed me information or avert their eyes when necessary.
Just then a door opened to the left of us and an all too familiar figure barrelled into the office: Detective Superintendent Michael Needham. I had to fight the urge to duck. The Superintendent didn’t approve of Aqua Investigations since he rightly suspected that we sometimes fell off the tightrope of legality he himself seemed to walk so effortlessly. In one respect it was more than a suspicion: he had always known that I owned an unlicensed WWII revolver, a Webley.38, and had spent years patting me down trying to catch me carrying it. Then a few months ago it had been fired in a typically messy episode of Aqua business and had promptly been confiscated, together with all our personal effects.
Needham dumped a file in someone’s in-tray and was safely on his way out again when kind Sergeant Hayes called: ‘Morning, sir! You remember Mr Honeysett, don’t you?’
Needham stopped in his tracks, turned his big, mobile face towards me and gave me an evil stare. I had the feeling he’d known I was here all along. ‘He’s hard to forget. What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s become a victim of crime, sir.’
‘Make a nice change for him.’ He disappeared through the same door and shut it hard behind him.
‘How is your corpulent Super these days?’ I asked Hayes, who wasn’t exactly skinny himself.
‘Lousy of mood and short of temper. But I’m sure seeing you here cheered him up no end.’
‘What’s eating him? This year’s crime figures out?’
‘He’s got a medical coming up in three weeks and has gone on another diet. He’s like a bear with a sore head when he doesn’t get his two sugars in his tea. Personally I think it’s the artificial sweeteners driving him round the bend. .’ Hayes suddenly put the brakes on his indiscretion, remembering I was only a meddling civilian. ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ He ran his eyes down the form. ‘It’s more than likely then that someone stole the keys to your car while you were at the Rose and Crown. Unless you left them in the ignition, of course. Ah, ah, ah.’ He stopped my protests with a calming gesture. ‘It’s easily done and we come across it all the time. Now don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ he added reassuringly. ‘It’s not the kind of motor that gets nicked to order after all. What state it’ll be in is another question.’ He gave me his sweetest smile.
Back outside I turned up my collar in a feeble attempt to keep pneumonia at bay and scooted along Manvers Street. The rain was back, driven by a wind that seemed to come from all directions at once. Everyone else was hurrying too with hunched shoulders or fighting umbrellas more a hindrance than an asset. By the time I got to York Street and pushed open the door to the steamed-up Café Retro I felt clammy and miserable and in need of comfort. I found a tiny table at the back. When the waitress appeared I ordered a large mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of chips. The Retro was, as the name implied, made to look like it had been there since time immemorial with the aid of imitation marble, fake gilded mirrors and distressed waitresses, but now it had been here for so long it had taken on a genuine patina of its own. It seemed an age until my order arrived but it was worth it just for the chips. I drowned them in ketchup and took comfort by the handful. Losing the car was bad enough but while I was filling in the form for Sergeant Hayes I’d realized how much stuff I’d left in it: video camera, binoculars, Dictaphone, CDs, sunglasses. .
The big café window was blind with condensation and the door opened constantly with people looking in, hoping to find a table just to get out of the rain. I called Annis on my mobile; I was in no mood for getting soaked at a bus stop. She answered grumpily and my request for her taxi service didn’t exactly cheer her up but the offer of hot chocolate finally swung it. After a short while I put in the order and made sure the waitress took the empty chip bowl away so it couldn’t damage my culinary reputation. French fries, moi? When Annis splashed through the door her hot chocolate had only been standing on the table for a minute which puts the respective speeds of the disgruntled painter and harassed waitress in perspective.
‘What a sight for sore eyes,’ she said and sank her face into the mound of whipped cream. She had hardly got wet in the rain which could only mean one thing. ‘I’m parked right outside on a triple yellow. Any parking fines payable by the passenger,’ she slurped.
We ran the few yards across the street and jumped into the cab of the Land Rover. She had a fabulous moustache of whipped cream. I leant over and kissed it away. ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue once more.’
‘That’s okay. I was getting a bit fed up anyway. Smoke from the stove, blue light from the plastic tarpaulin and the flapping noise it makes, it’s enough to drive you potty.’ Annis did her mysterious ministrations and mumbled her invocations and the Landy burbled into life.
Some unexplained bottleneck in Broad Street had slowed traffic to a crawl. A number 7 bus was shipping water as it took on a few bedraggled passengers at the corner with Green Street. And there he was. ‘Look. See the guy about to get on the bus with the hood up and the shoulder bag? That’s James Lane, the guy I’m supposed to be following.’ It looked like the same few people who had left from Larkhall in the morning were coming back on the same bus. I recognized the snotty kid and his young mother and the bloke in the raincoat.
‘I’ll let the bus pull out then, shall I?’
‘Don’t bother, I know where he’s going and the bus’ll only go round in circles.’ I settled down to a good moan about traffic jams, the state of public transport, the price of roof repairs, the apathetic police response to my car crisis, the freak weather and that bit of hard skin on my middle finger that annoyed me. In fact the unusually violent bouncing action Annis got out of the Landy as she flung it down the track to the house made it completely impossible to chew at it. ‘Whehehewow what aaaare youhoohoo dooin?’ I managed.