He thought of that ornament now for some crazy reason. Maybe the same crazy reason he’d said yes to the policeman’s question.
“Hello, sir. We’re just asking drivers about a woman who might have been hitching along this way a couple of weekends back, late on Sunday the thirty-first or early Monday the first. Don’t suppose you were along this way then, were you?”
Why? Why had he opened his big mouth and said, “Yes, I was.” Why? It was just so... stunning. He’d never felt important like that before, included like that. He’d been stopped before by similar checkpoints, usually trying to find witnesses to a crash or a hit-and-run. He’d never been able to help in the past. He’d never been able to involve himself. Not until now.
Say nowt at no time to no one.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
“Yes, I was. I picked up a hitchhiker, too. Young woman. Would that be her, do you think?”
The constable had said something like, “Just wait there, sir,” and then had retreated, off to have a word with his superior. Right then, right at that precise moment, Bill Moncur knew he’d said the wrong thing. He’d had a load to deliver to Margate, and after that he’d had to head for Whitstable and Canterbury before home. A busy schedule. Why hadn’t he just shaken his head and driven on? Another van, which had been stopped in front of him, now started off again. His boss would give him hell for this. Why didn’t you just keep your trap shut, Bill? His van was still revving. He could take off while the copper was out of sight. But not even Bill Moncur was that stupid. They were looking for a young woman. Maybe she’d gone missing, been raped. Couldn’t have been the woman he picked up, could it? Must be somebody else. Oh Christ, but what if it was her? What if she’d been found dead in a ditch somewhere, and here he was saying he’d given her a lift. He’d be a suspect, the sort you heard about on the news. A man is helping police with their inquiries. Well, that’s what he was trying to do, but out of public-spiritedness, not because he had anything to confess or anything to be guilty about. Okay, so he skimmed a bit off his company. He might use the van for a bit of business at nights and weekends, but never anything outrageous. Not like Pat, who’d taken his van over the Channel one weekend and used it for smuggling back porn mags, videos, cigarettes, and booze. It was like one of those old mobile shops in the back of Pat’s van, but he’d shifted the lot before Monday morning, and with four hundred quid clear profit in his pocket. But Jesus, if he’d been caught... caught using the firm’s van...
“Hello, sir.” There were two of them standing there, the constable he’d spoken to before and now this plainclothesman, reeking of ciggies and CID. “My colleague tells me you may have some information for us?”
“Yeah, that’s right, but I’m a bit pushed just now, see. Deliveries to make. Maybe I could come into the station later on, like. Tomorrow morning, eh?”
The CID man was gesturing with his arm, as if he hadn’t heard a word Bill had been saying. “You can park just over there, sir. In the turnout, other side of the police car. We’ll have a little chat then, eh? Don’t want to hold up the vehicles behind.”
So that was that. He’d shoved first gear home and started off. Even as he moved slowly forwards, he thought: I could still run for it. He shook the thought aside. He had absolutely nothing to hide. It wouldn’t take him five minutes to tell them his story, and after that he could bugger off again. Maybe they’d take his name and address, maybe they’d get back to him later, but for today he’d be back on the road. With luck, he could push the speedometer to seventy or eighty on some stretches, make up the time easy. Wouldn’t it be funny if he got stopped for speeding? Sorry, officer, I was helping your colleagues with their inquiries and I sort of got behind on my deliveries.
He pulled into the turnout at quarter to eleven. Now, as he sat in the police station and lit his seventeenth cigarette — seventeenth of the day — it was quarter past one. They’d brought him a filled roll, egg mayonnaise, disgusting, and a packet of spring onion crisps. By dint of putting the crisps in the roll, he managed to force it all down. He thought, not for the first time: On a normal run I’d be in the Feathers by now, supping a pint and tucking into one of that big bird Julie’s homemade stews. Full of succulent carrots and little bits of onion. No gristle on the meat either. Beautiful. Egg mayonnaise and bloody crisps. Bill Moncur and his big bloody mouth.
They’d let him call the office. That hadn’t been much fun, even though the CID man had explained that everything was all right, that he wasn’t in any trouble or anything, but that he’d have to stay at the station for a little while longer. The firm was sending someone else out, some relief driver (it might even be Pat). The van keys were at the desk. The reliever would pick them up and do the run for him. The relief driver would stop at the Feathers to chat up Julie and watch the way she pulled a pint with her manicured, painted fingernails on the pump.
How much fucking longer? he said to himself. There were four empty Styrofoam cups in front of him as well as the empty crisp packet, cellophane from the roll, brimming ashtray, ciggies, and lighter. He used the tip of his finger to pick up a few crumbs of crisp from the desktop, transferring them to his mouth. They’d be along in a minute to ask him if he wanted more coffee. He’d tell them then: “I’m not waiting any fucking longer. You can’t keep me here. If you want me, you know where to look. I’m in the phone book.”
That’s what he’d say. This time. This time he’d really say it, and not just think it. Bonny girl they’d sent in last time to ask about the coffee, mind. Took his mind off it for a moment, so that he forgot to ask in the end. No, not ask, demand. It was his right to walk out of there whenever he felt like it. He’d only been in a police station twice in his life. Once when he was thirteen, and they found him staggering pissed out of his head along the main road. They took him back to the station, put him into a cell, stood him up, and kneed him in the nuts until he threw up. Then they left him for an hour before kicking him out. Could hardly walk straight for days after that... which was ironic, as Pat said, since they’d picked him up in the first place for not walking straight.
That was once. The second time, they raided a pub during a brawl, and though he’d taken hardly any part in it, he was dragged down to the station with the rest of them. But the barman, Milo, had put in a word for him, so they’d let him go with a caution.
That was twice. Hardly premier league, was it, hardly major crime? Were they holding him so they could look him up in their records? Maybe they were seeing if he had any priors for rape or murder or abduction or anything. Well, in that case he’d walk when they’d finished checking. How long could it take?
Of course, he did have something to hide. For a start, if it got back to his boss that he was out in the van on a Sunday night... well, bosses tended to have inquiring minds in that direction. But his boss wouldn’t find out, not unless the police said anything. He could always tell them he was in his car rather than the van anyway... but no, it didn’t do to lie when the truth wouldn’t hurt. If they caught him lying, they might wonder what else he was hiding. No, he’d tell them. He was using the van to help out a friend. And indeed this was the truth. His neighbor Chas played keyboards in a sort of country-and-western band. They’d been playing a Sunday night gig at a pub in Folkestone, and he’d been acting as road manager, which meant picking up the PA from Margate and taking it back to Folkestone. It was all a fuckup in the first place, that’s why he’d had the drive to do. The band’s own PA had blown half a dozen fuses or something, and a friend of Chas’s who had a residency in Margate had said the band could borrow his band’s gear on the proviso that they brought it back the same night.