Classic in the Barn Read online

  I tried reason. ‘It’s a rare car,’ I said. ‘Especially the drop-head version. If you don’t want to sell it for your own sake, Mrs Davis . . .’ I looked from one to the other, but there was no sign that Guy was going to take ownership either of her or the car. ‘My fault. I understand now; maybe it belonged to your late husband?’

  I broke off as Guy marched even closer, but that wasn’t the reason I stopped. It was Polly. She was no longer kneading scraps of paper, but was looking directly at the car with an expression not of anger but almost, I thought, near to tears. Fool that I was, I realized this must have been the car Mike died in.

  When Guy reached me, he simply spun me round and pushed me headlong into the hedge.

  ‘Crash back through your hole, mister,’ he suggested, ‘and stay there.’

  You get to know how to look after yourself in the oil trade, and I could have floored him so quickly that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his fruit trees – or Polly, if that was the relationship – for some time. But that wouldn’t have achieved anything except momentary satisfaction. Instead, I said sincerely to Polly, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Davis, if I brought back sad memories.’

  I don’t think she even heard me. She was still looking at the Lagonda, with a grief that humbled me. No one would ever look at me like that. A woman like this . . . I dragged my thoughts away from a vision of Polly in bed and concentrated on the lovely Lagonda. Polly had known the car was there, so why this intensity now? Why did she keep it at all, if it was so upsetting? There had to be some story attached to it. People keep old cars for all sorts of reasons. To be buried in them, for sentiment’s sake, for lack of money to restore them, or just because it’s too much trouble to get rid of them, or too expensive to run them.

  Nothing about Polly Davis suggested any of these explanations worked, however. The very opposite. She looked the kind of woman who would relish being seen in a classic car – unlike dear old Guy. I was back to my first explanation: this was the car Mike had died in. And yet that didn’t fully satisfy me either. There was something weird about this situation – and about the Lagonda itself. Everything I had seen suggested that apart from the headlights it was a beauty of a car, and yet something didn’t quite add up. Two of my noses, for precious cars and for trouble, were pushing me forwards, towards my own, my very own, black hole.

  TWO

  To sum up my situation as I stalked back to Pluckley where I’d left my car: it was the Lagonda or Harry Prince. I preferred to pursue the former, since the latter brought to the fore the nose I lacked, the one for storing money.

  ‘Any time, Jack, any time.’ Last time I had seen Harry, he had chuckled in joyful anticipation of getting his hands on Dad’s collection of automobilia, with or without Classic Car Restorations and Frogs Hill Farm itself. It had been the first time he had made an offer to me without getting dirt straight back in his personal fuel line. He’s a car dealer, is Prince, and sees himself as King and Emperor of the car trade in this part of Kent. So far I’d refused his deal every time. I don’t like the way he does things, I don’t like the way he treats people, and I don’t like Harry. I do like his wife, but that’s not much help.

  My major problem was money. Not an unusual one, I grant you, but crucial to me at that moment. When Dad died, just after I’d returned to Kent, he was greatly mourned by all who loved him and classic cars. Especially his family. Having returned to Kent merely to sort things out, somehow I never left again. A man can only take the oil trade for so long.

  There was no question of selling Frogs Hill Farm, even if I was forced to because of the debts Dad had left. The moving costs would outweigh the sale profits. The Greeks believed that we all have fatal flaws that lead to our ruin, but I had searched in vain for Dad’s when he was alive. After his death, however, it had emerged that his world famous Glory Boot had got that way because he’d never let cost stand in the way of a new acquisition. Result: first class collection of automobilia – but mortgages galore on Frogs Hill Farm which Croesus would have had a job paying off, let alone me. So I had settled down with Classic Car Restorations, blithely hoping that I could make it pay. It was a struggle, and now it had reached crunch point.

  I’d set out along the bridle path this sunny day just to talk over prices with Harry, and we would both know this meant it was getting serious. Fortunately, he didn’t know I was coming, as I’d wanted the advantage of surprise. The happy surprise had been mine – the Lagonda. It might give me a lifeline to pay my debts for a couple of months – even if Polly and Mr Rottweiler were standing in the way. I didn’t yet know quite how I was going to get hold of that elegant lady – and perhaps even Polly into the bargain, which was an increasingly nice thought. Something, I told myself, would turn up.

  With this optimistic outlook, I decided Harry Prince could wait until I had exhausted every other avenue. I’d head straight back to Frogs Hill Farm to begin my Lagonda campaign.

  Frogs Hill Farm is so tucked away that it’s surprising any customers find their way there. They generally arrive at the large modern barn that houses the restoration business with a great air of triumph, as if they’ve just solved the enigma of perpetual motion. Len likes it this way. We are high up on the Lower Greensand stratum with fine views of the Kentish Weald beneath us in the distance, and if one squints between the trees in roughly the opposite direction we also have brief glimpses of the chalk North Downs.

  What road are we on, customers naturally ask. Road? The way to Frogs Hill Farm is along a mere track, though a lane leads grudgingly off from Piper’s Green village on the Pluckley to Egerton road and runs somewhere near the farm. After that, it’s a slog up our long drive – or pleasant motoring, according to how many potholes need to be filled in. Len Vickers, who is in charge of restorations with Zoe Grant’s help, believes in making customers work to find us, whereas I take a duller view. I prefer not to be sued for damage to classic and fragile beauties.

  By the time I reached the farm again that morning, I was full of renewed hope and vigour. Guy Williams’ aggression had receded in my mind and so had my gut feeling of something nasty in the woodshed. All I could think of was that beautiful Lagonda, which had my name written on it as surely as my passport. And if by any happy chance its owner was part of the deal, Shangri-La appeared to be just over my horizon.

  I went straight to the petrolhead zone of operations, where Len and Zoe were working on a 1934 Riley 12/4 Kestrel saloon. This little gem needed some serious suspension, braking and electrical work if it was ever to see another MOT certificate, so I was up against stiff competition if I expected eager interest in my concerns.

  ‘Lagonda, V12,’ I announced for openers as I marched into the Pits, as we call the barn workshop.

  Silence. Not even a grunt.

  Then Zoe’s hand did briefly wave above the grease pit and a spiel of stuff about various chassis and engine lubrication systems followed. Push-button grease jobs and full-flow oil conversions are now delights of the past, but for their devoted admirers they are subjects of never-ending joy.

  Len and Zoe make a good team – but a strange mix. Len must have reached sixty now, although I’ve never dared ask him. I’d get a crusty put-down. Any words not devoted to the inner workings of, say, a Cotal preselector gearbox are wasted, in his view. His father was a World War Two engineer in the RAF, but Len took to cars. He was big in the racing scene in the fifties and sixties, then opted for a quieter life tinkering with classic cars off circuit. At one point he got in with a bad crowd and made the mistake of believing that a good classic must have a good owner. He went even quieter after that, but he brought a car to show Dad one day, and somehow – neither of us knew quite how – he moved into the barn and never moved out, thus beginning Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations.

  Because Len is good at his job – very good – business is brisk. Unfortunately, he is also slow, so the briskness is all on one side: cars coming, but not so often leaving. Len is a perfectionist, but the result is that t
here’s no reliable monthly income to pay off those delightful mortgages on the farm, even with my input.

  The only way the business works at all is because of Zoe, Len’s saving grace and mine. With her spiky orange hair, surmounted by a baseball cap, she and Len make an odd couple, but a great team. She must be about twenty-three now, having dropped out of university and into classic cars, preferring getting her hands dirty over wheel bearings and half-shafts to engineering courses. Clad in jeans, sweatshirt and baseball hat, she worked happily (and more speedily) with Len for a couple of years until Dad died and the cuckoo in their comfortable nest arrived. Correction: two cuckoos. Firstly, me. I squawk around them anxious to help, but my knowledge of classic cars is mostly in my head, not my hands. Secondly, her boyfriend – lover, perhaps, who knows? – Rob Lane, who is trouble with a grin on its face.

  ‘Ever seen a drophead round here?’ I yelled at Len and Zoe, trying for more decibels than Classic FM, which was apparently essential for their work, as it slowed them down, Len claimed . . . No comment.

  ‘Yup. A thirty-eight V12,’ Len shouted back, and then returned to his work. This time, a Laycock de Normanville overdrive unit seemed to be the object of his affection.

  ‘I saw one in an old barn—’

  Off went the radio, up came Zoe from behind the tool chest, interrupting with a bawled-out:

  ‘There’s a car in my barn,

  ‘Dear Jack, dear Ja – ack.

  ‘Oh what is it doing there,

  ‘Dear Zoe, dear Zoe . . .’ And on and on. Even Len was trying not to laugh.

  I eyed them with scorn. ‘If neither of you has the imagination to think beyond idle jests—’

  ‘I have, I have,’ she pleaded. ‘Please do tell us all about this barn, dear Jack.’

  ‘On the bridleway from Pluckley to Charden.’

  ‘Greensand Farm, Polly Davis’s place. Yup. That’s where I saw the drophead. Years ago, it was. Serviced it once.’ This was a long speech for Len. Talking takes too much time away from what’s really important in life, such as Roots-type superchargers or the superiority of desmodromic valve systems. ‘Guy Williams rents the orchards,’ he added.

  ‘You know Polly Davis?’ The adrenalin began to rise. This could be a breakthrough. Casually but smartly dressed in a Ted Lapidus blazer and slacks, I could stroll up to her at a drinks party – and who knows? Problem: I don’t do drinks parties, or rather I’m not in the right set to do them.

  ‘Nope. Met her though.’ Len grew positively chatty. ‘Mike ran that classics to order business. Before your time.’

  ‘Yes, but was it a good ’un?’ By which I meant: was it strictly legit? I’d hate to think of that Lagonda being part of a non legit set-up, i.e. stolen.

  Len considered this for so long I had to fight to control impatience, which never works with Len. ‘Seemed to be. I wouldn’t have touched it.’

  Helpful, I thought. I could not recall Dad ever mentioning meeting Mike Davis, but he wasn’t exactly one for the social life. Mum had done her best to winkle him out of his mental garage, but after she died, its doors rarely opened. He ruled over the Glory Boot and waited for people to come to him, when he proved the best and most affable of hosts.

  ‘Polly’s OK,’ Zoe volunteered.

  ‘She wasn’t OK today,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘I was at school with Bea; she’s her daughter,’ Zoe continued undeterred. ‘She’s just come back from working abroad. Got a job in Canterbury. Polly runs a picture framing business at the farm.’

  ‘Any hope of getting me an introduction as a respectable citizen?’

  A snort. ‘No way. Long queue.’ A wave, and Zoe was back in the real world of nuts and bolts.

  Len was still ruminating though. ‘That Lagonda,’ he said. A long pause, spanner in hand.

  ‘I presume it was Mike’s, perhaps the one he died in,’ I said.

  ‘Hers, not his,’ he said to my surprise. ‘Belonged to her dad.’

  That was a relief. My foot hadn’t been quite as big as I thought. Of course, it could still be the car Mike died in.

  ‘So why is she letting it go to rack and ruin in the barn? Has she got no soul?’ Surely such a face must have a soul somewhere.

  ‘Used to drive it,’ Len informed me. ‘Pride and joy.’

  ‘I could restore it for her and sell it,’ I said plaintively, ‘but she won’t hear of it.’

  ‘Takes all sorts,’ was Len’s final offering, and then he too went back to his real world and left me to worry about mortgages.

  As may be apparent, I don’t have any capital stashed away for rainy days. I had thrown up my oil job, confident that, with my early and brief marriage well in the past and my daughter in her early twenties, I was a lily of the field and could take my time over choosing how to toil and spin. One sight of the massive debts of Frogs Hill had cured me of that quaint notion. Fortunately, I’m not totally dependent on Len’s and Zoe’s contribution for income. I’d become a car detective in earnest.

  One day Zoe had had enough of my incompetent technical abilities. ‘Stop poking your nose in, Jack,’ she had yelled in exasperation. ‘Poke it out.’

  So, with their help – Len on the knowledge side, Zoe on the ‘let’s go for it’ side – I had begun working with the police and insurance companies on routine jobs and then added the hunting down of rare cars on commission for individuals, or anything anyone would pay me for. Zoe and Len eye me warily now, as though my detective work might tempt their cuckoo to migrate to foreign parts again and leave a devastated nest behind him. He won’t, of course. This cuckoo is here to stay, but not in a nest run by Harry Prince.

  That Lagonda was, therefore, my next mission. Strictly speaking, I should have been returning a call from DCI Dave Jennings, who operates the Kent Police Car Crime Unit, but the Lagonda called more loudly. First step: meet Polly Davis under more favourable circumstances. In order to do that, I needed to know more about this Lagonda. A few facts and especially figures might come in very useful. Attractive though Polly was, the Lagonda had to be my main target.

  Was that true? I had a moment’s doubt because classics and their owners are joined at the hubcap; you can’t have one without understanding the other. The thought of being joined at the hip with Polly – although what I had in mind might be somewhat difficult if we were – was a highly pleasurable one. We’d got off to a bad start, but there was surely something I could do about that.

  I thought out a rapid plan of action. ‘Fancy the Wheatsheaf on Sunday week?’ I threw out to the two heads that were all there was to be seen of my colleagues, who were back at their far more interesting jobs. These included, I knew, making an elaborate exhaust system for a ‘blower’ Bentley, and therefore I naturally only received a couple of ‘ums’ in reply.

  Every third Sunday in the month the Wheatsheaf pub, a few miles from Piper’s Green, hosts a classic car get-together. I’d seen a Lagonda there once or twice, and if I struck lucky I might have a chance to find out how rare my barn discovery was, and whether it was well known to the buffs. Given the noses of the usual suspects at this gathering, there was a pretty good chance someone would know something, even if the Lagonda I’d seen there previously failed to show.

  The classic car world is a knowledgeable one, and a friendly one – usually – and a lot of my sleuthing work is done at car shows both here and in continental Europe. Len had implied that Mike Davis wasn’t squeaky clean in his car doings, and if so I might pick up some vibes on that.

  Then, on a whim, I changed my plan of action completely. Although the logical thing was to do my homework first, what I wanted to do was see Polly Davis again. I thought of Zoe’s throwaway ‘a queue at her door’. A whole lot of trouble might lie ahead, but hey – when had that ever stopped me?

  Or stopped Zoe, come to that. There was, after all, Rob Lane in her life.

  Rob Lane, the big drawback to Zoe. ‘He means well,’ had been her less than wholehearted excuse for Rob last time he
had turned up at Frogs Hill. He hadn’t exactly covered himself with glory when he’d put a fingerprint on a freshly lacquered Bugatti firewall. Or the time he’d backed his old banger into a customer’s priceless Mercedes 540K Cabrio.

  I’d spent ages of avuncular time trying to warn Zoe off Rob. Warn her off? You’d think I’d urged her to make a bid for the best catch in Europe. Somehow, however, fate has a way of choosing unlikely messengers, and this time I’d had to grit my teeth. It seemed my path to Polly could be through Rob.

  ‘What?’ I asked dangerously, ‘are you doing here?’

  I had come to the Pits the next morning, my head still full of Polly and Lagondas, to find Rob sitting on the bonnet of an MGB, and even Len wasn’t yelling at him to get the hell off. If I’d done that, it would have been a different matter. I was only the boss.

  Zoe had run into Rob at university and made the mistake of not instantly running in the opposite direction. Was it love? Was it sex? Was it some fatal attraction for catastrophe? Don’t ask me. I’m a car detective, not a psychologist. All I know is that Zoe eyes him as fondly as if he were Clarence, that messenger sent from the heavens in the old James Stewart weepie It’s a Wonderful Life. Not with Rob around it isn’t.

  ‘I came,’ he said plaintively, moving off the bonnet, ‘to ask Zoe if she’d like to go to Hurst Manor tonight.’ He looked injured, every inch the victim.

  ‘Do you, Zoe?’ I asked politely. Typical Rob invitation. He is, as they say, of good family, and every inch of his confident face and neatly trimmed designer stubble betrays it. Bored charm is Rob’s speciality. He’s waiting for the big opportunity that fate will drop in his path tomorrow. But even if tomorrow should happen to come, he would have to be coaxed into taking up the offer. That’s where Zoe comes in. I don’t think they live or even sleep together, but how would I know? Zoe keeps her private life to herself.