Classic Mistake Read online

  ‘Your car’s been stolen?’ All right, that was a fatuous question too, but it was all I could cope with.

  ‘Last week. Outside the bakery. I left her there the night before because I only live down the road, so sometimes I walk. This old heap’s my boyfriend’s dad’s.’ She waved a disparaging hand at the Volvo.

  ‘And where is the bakery?’ My turn to be very, very patient.

  ‘Burchett Forstal. I work there.’

  I wasn’t that surprised Dave hadn’t contacted me on this case. A Morris Minor is an odd car to steal. It was the first car built after the war to be accessible to everybody, and everybody duly loved it. It was Britain’s answer to the Volkswagen Beetle, although it never spread its fame worldwide, as did its rival. Production of the ‘poached egg’, as Lord Nuffield, founder of the Morris Motors company, pejoratively called it from its softly curvy shape, stopped in 1971, but the Morris Minor was so reliable it still defies oblivion in large numbers.

  My guess was that Dave’s team had probably put the theft down to joyriders, which meant Melody would show up sooner or later, but after a week that scenario was beginning to have a question mark over it. Burchett Forstal is a hamlet roughly ten miles away from Pluckley and Piper’s Green. It’s in the Charing–Challock area, and it’s chiefly known to non-residents as the most unfindable destination in the long list of Kentish hidden villages. A pretty spot though.

  I realized I’d been silent too long.

  ‘Well?’ Daisy asked. ‘Are you going to find Melody or not?’

  ‘I wish I could. But I have to wait until I’m asked to investigate.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  Faced with this implacable goddess, I surrendered. Who wouldn’t? ‘I’ll find out what’s happening.’

  This wasn’t enough. ‘I mean,’ Daisy said earnestly, ‘I’ll pay you and all that. Private-like.’

  Difficult. ‘The problem is that it’s a police job as you’ve already reported it. I can’t barge in.’

  As I hope I’ve made clear, Morris Minors are very special cars. They aren’t motor cars so much as symbols of a way of life, which puts them in a somewhat different category. Classic car-lovers usually fall into two main groups: those who remember a classic fondly from their youth, and those who admire beautiful objects from the past whether or not they have personal resonance for them. The Minor is almost in a class of its own, however. It rings bells from the past with those who owned them or grew up with them, whether in the fifties, sixties, seventies or even eighties. Whether new or second-hand, the bells ring so loudly that it has inspired a sort of folk memory down the generations, and today it flourishes in clubs and get-togethers. It’s nice and curvy to look at, has good engineering, and has entered the twenty-first century ‘trailing clouds of glory’, to quote Wordsworth’s poem. It becomes the centre of attention at picnics galore and carefree days out.

  I saw Miss Sunshine’s face fall at my refusal to be drawn, so I added hastily, ‘Tell me about Daisy – no, Melody. Sorry,’ I corrected myself as she dissolved into giggles. ‘Wrong way round. A Morris Minor isn’t usually a first choice as a vehicle for someone your age.’

  ‘Melody belonged to my gran,’ she explained. ‘We lived with her, Mum, Dad and me, for a few years when I was still a kid. Mum and Dad were working, so Gran and I went on all these picnics and explored everywhere. She’s great is Gran. She’s pinky-coloured.’ More giggles. ‘Melody I mean, not Gran. Melody isn’t just a car.’ She searched for words. ‘She’s like part of us, see?’

  ‘I do.’ Pinky-coloured, I thought, was probably Daisy’s name for the glorious Rose Taupe Morris Minor pinky-grey. ‘Is it split screen?’ I asked. ‘What year?’

  Daisy looked blank.

  ‘The windscreen,’ I explained. My turn to be patient. ‘Does it have a strip down the middle? And is it a convertible?’

  ‘Oh. No, it doesn’t. And it’s got a proper roof. Don’t know when Gran bought it.’

  ‘A Traveller?’ Another blank look from Daisy so I amplified this: ‘An estate car?’

  ‘No.’ Indignation now. ‘She’s a real car.’

  Not a convertible, not a Traveller and had to be 1956 onward. It was obviously a Minor 1000. I was getting somewhere, I supposed. ‘How many doors, and what time of day did it disappear?’

  ‘Two, and she must have gone in the night,’ Daisy told me solemnly, and I could swear there were tears in her eyes. ‘I get to work at seven thirty for the first bread and rolls and stuff and found her gone. Last Wednesday it was.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’ I asked solemnly, knowing this question would be expected of me.

  ‘No. Come over and see the scene of the crime.’ Daisy was cheering up now I was taking her seriously, or at least appearing to do so. ‘Come on then,’ she added, when I made no move. ‘Let’s go.’ And when I still didn’t budge: ‘Look, do you want this job or not?’

  I looked at Daisy, and I remembered the hornet’s nest busily building up with Eva. It could be a good excuse to dodge visits. ‘Yes, but two conditions: first it’ll have to be tomorrow morning, and second I have to clear it with the police.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Don’t you have to ask the boss before you march out on a working day?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she conceded.

  I watched her reluctantly climb back into the Volvo, clearly thinking she was being short changed. She wasn’t. Give me a choice between Daisy’s Melody and sticking my neck out with Eva’s affairs and there’d be no contest. But there was no choice. For all sorts of reasons, Eva had to be top of my agenda.

  Dave was only too willing to agree when I rang him the next morning about Melody – with one small exception. The Budget. Fine if I found the car. A small fee would then materialize. Any complications, however, and it would appear I should have left it to the team. ‘All clear?’ Dave asked me jovially.

  I said it was, then prepared for my trip to Burchett Forstal, which began to seem a picnic compared with the death of Carlos Mendez. I was just pondering whether to take the Gordon-Keeble or the Lagonda, when the decision had to be abruptly postponed. My mobile rang, and it was Eva.

  ‘Darling, I come to see you,’ she announced. ‘I take taxi. You pay him.’

  Panic made me undiplomatic. ‘You can’t.’ The brief silence that greeted this gave me a chance to think. ‘Cara’s on her way, and the police will need you close at hand to help them with their enquiries.’ This sounded uncomfortably formal, so I rounded it off with, ‘Anyway, I have an appointment this morning.’

  ‘A woman?’ she screeched. ‘But I am your wife.’

  Oh, how that brought back the old days. No point in reminding her she wasn’t my wife and that I was a car detective with several jobs to do. So …

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A woman. She’s been kidnapped. Her name’s Melody.’

  After assuring Eva I hadn’t forsaken her and that I would contact her very shortly, I set off for Burchett Forstal with a pleasant, if temporary, sense of release. In my agitation I had initially found myself fastening the seat-belt in the Alfa and not one of my two beloved classics, but had decided to take the extra time and replace it with the Lagonda, which I guessed would be a hit with Daisy. Even so, it was Eva who was occupying my mind as I drove my beauty down the Frogs Hill Lane. Tackle the dirty fuel line first, son, my father would always advise. Polish your bonnet later. I’d take his advice. Turning off into the maze of lanes leading to Burchett Forstal, I began to calm down and think rationally about Carlos’s death.

  His murder, it seemed clear to me, was no random attack but something to do with the ‘business’ he had expected to transact in Kent. After Daisy had left me the previous evening, I had tackled the Internet to see what it could produce on Carlos. I had a feeling that good though Brandon was at his job, I was going to need all the background information I could get. I can’t say I hit pay dirt in my search but it was interesting. Carlos’s father Vicente had run a band in Engl
and in the 1970s, which is presumably how Carlos had learned his trade. The last mention of Vicente’s band was in 1981 – though that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t still active, either in the UK or South America. The only mention of Carlos and the Charros was in 1988 at a gig in Brighton. These were pre-Internet days, and records of them on the net would be scanty.

  Burchett Forstal is deemed a hamlet, not a village, because it doesn’t boast its own church, but it does have a farm shop and bakery. In Kentish dialect a forstal is open land bordered by farm buildings, and Burchett was a prime example. Its one through-street passes a stretch of grass rising up to the farm shop and a granary barn, flanked by terraced cottages. Daisy lived in one of these a little further along the street. I’d already passed the bakery. I couldn’t miss it. Burchett Bakery announced itself with flags, signposts and a parking area. Understandable, I thought. A bakery for a community this size needs to draw custom from a wide area.

  Driving the Lagonda was a treat, and as I parked in front of Daisy’s home I was conscious that my arrival had been noted. The cottage, in which she probably lived with her parents, had been built in the days well before people thought of better things to do with their gardens than growing fruit and flowers (such as parking cars). The front garden was a wonderful mix of spring flowers, trees coming into leaf and rows of vegetables – in short, a traditional country garden.

  As I drew up, Daisy emerged like a ray of sunshine. She’d asked me to come when she had an hour’s break from the early morning shift, and she screamed with delight when she saw the Lagonda. This is a 1938 V12 drophead in all its glory, and it came into my life with treasured memories.1.

  ‘Hey,’ she cried, ‘this is a real picnic car, just like Melody. Let’s go, Jack.’

  ‘Picnicking? I’m here on business, miss,’ I told her gravely.

  She promptly saluted me. ‘OK, Gumshoe. Let’s get going.’ No walking for her today. She jumped enthusiastically into the Lagonda and squealed yet more delight. Her high spirits deflated as we reached the scene of the crime. ‘It was there,’ she said dolefully as we reached the bakery.

  I glanced around. The bakery had a second storey, and across the road were two cottages set well back. ‘Did anyone hear anything?’ I coached myself into remembering that the seriousness of a crime from the victim’s viewpoint is totally different to that of the law’s.

  ‘No. Dad reckons it was a two-man job and they pushed it along there.’ She pointed to where the hamlet petered out into open countryside – not far, and so her dad could be right.

  ‘It would have been driven away, though. No gang would risk bringing a low loader here.’

  Daisy regarded this as a marvel of detection. ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘We sleuths have keen minds. I take it you didn’t leave it unlocked or a key in the ignition?’

  End of admiration from Daisy. ‘You must think I’m nuts,’ she said scornfully. ‘No way.’

  The bakery, from its display, catered for everyone, producing a range from Chelsea buns and doughnuts to quiches and interesting looking pies to tempt the palate. Two delivery vans were parked outside, which suggested there was a lunchtime delivery service.

  ‘Is there a pub near here?’ I asked, thinking that might be a rendezvous for joyriders.

  ‘Closed down.’

  A familiar fate for small country pubs. ‘Anywhere near?’

  ‘Justie’s dad’s at Tickenden.’

  I took it that ‘Justie’ was her own pet name for him. ‘Justin’s your boyfriend?’ Bad lot? I wondered.

  ‘He’s like – well – hopeful. Can’t make my mind up.’ She grinned conspiratorially at me, and I felt privileged – in a fatherly way. This was a game I was long out of. ‘His dad owns the May Tree Inn.’

  ‘I’ve been there once or twice.’ It’s famous now for being a pretty country pub with good food. I’d been there in my youth, before marriage and I had disagreed with each other, and again quite recently. In a previous existence in the late 70s the pub was chiefly famous for something completely different – as a well-hidden dive for career criminals, a role that culminated in the May Tree Shoot-Out. A priceless collection of early English gold brooches, and cups etc, had been hijacked while in transit from its stately-home owners to be sold on the continent. The villains retreated to the May Tree, where they proceeded to have a serious falling out. The then manager of the May Tree had disappeared into one of her Majesty’s prisons for umpteen years. The pub had abruptly been sold by the brewery and had forged a new life for itself.

  ‘I think I met the owner,’ I continued. ‘Gentle giant of a chap.’

  ‘Yeah. George is OK, so’s Justie – but a bit, well you know …’ She grinned sheepishly. ‘Too gentle.’

  ‘No such thing,’ I said sadly. ‘You’ll learn.’

  She shrugged. ‘Got to see the world first, haven’t I?’

  ‘And what would constitute the world for you?’

  ‘Africa, China, Aussie, maybe America. That sort of place.’

  I held my peace. Places are inhabited by people much the same as those she met in Burchett Forstal – good, bad, dull, interesting, gentle, fierce – but who was I to knock her dreams? I’d seen my ‘world’ in the oil business, and thankfully I was now back at Frogs Hill, determined never to move again.

  ‘Justie’s got some evidence,’ she told me.

  ‘About Melody?’

  ‘Yeah. Reckons he can get her back for me. But he hasn’t done it, has he?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Says there are complications and he can’t split on a mate. I told him, stuff that. Just get Melody back quick. That’s why I came to hire you.’

  I let this pass. ‘I’ll stand you lunch at the May Tree,’ I offered. It would be pleasant and would also, I thought guiltily, postpone Eva’s problem for another hour or two. I doubted if it would lead to Melody’s recovery though. ‘Is Justin the barman?’

  ‘No. He works in Canterbury at a supermarket, but the barmaid’s off on maternity leave so he’s filling in for her.’

  Tickenden was only a couple of miles away, and if we’d been crows even less. As it was, the winding lanes were a delight in the Lagonda of which Daisy continued to show her appreciation with little whoops of pleasure. She insisted on having the top down even though it was spitting with rain. ‘Bet the Queen doesn’t have one of these cars,’ she said proudly, lifting her head back to the breeze and her face to the spots of rain.

  ‘Bet the Queen would like one,’ I replied happily.

  The May Tree looked as innocent of crime now as Buckingham Palace. I could see its wooden tables outside, and a village green with a chestnut tree in full bloom. History alone knows what happened to the hawthorn that lent the pub its informal name. The idea of a shoot-out here now was incongruous; it was more like the idyllic Potwell Inn where H. G. Wells’s Mr Polly found his Shangri-La. Then I remembered that Mr Polly had had to fight for his paradise with the formidable Uncle Jim, who chased him with broken bottles all too vigorously. I comforted myself that Mr Polly had won by guile in the end, and in any case George Taylor, the licensee here, proved no such formidable opponent. Tall, well built and slow, the grin on his face reassured you that you were his favourite customer.

  ‘I’ll call Justin, Daisy,’ he told her amiably.

  ‘This is Mr Jack Colby,’ Daisy announced importantly. ‘He’s going to find Melody for me.’

  George shot me a conspiratorial look of despair and disappeared to find his son. Justin, when he appeared, was not yet his father’s son where confidence and amiability were concerned. In his early twenties, he had a look of defiance in his eyes as he greeted me before turning them on Daisy in adoration.

  ‘Told you I’d handle Melody,’ he muttered sulkily when she did not return this sign of devotion.

  ‘Yeah, but you haven’t, have you?’

  ‘Suppose we all have a drink?’ I intervened hastily.

  ‘I’m on duty,’ he sai
d obstinately, but his father took a firm hand.

  ‘You go, son. I’ll handle the bar.’

  We ordered sandwiches and salad and adjourned to a table by the window. As Justin looked increasingly uncomfortable, I decided to take this head on. ‘Daisy tells me you have some information about Melody.’

  He hesitated, despite my non-confrontational tone. The view outside the window was clearly fascinating him. ‘Think I saw her round here, but didn’t want to say nothing till I’d checked it out.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, sort of … . I reckon it’s in a barn.’

  ‘Where?’ Daisy was taking no prisoners. ‘Why haven’t you told me?’

  ‘Don’t know where. Somewhere.’ Justin had a hunted look.

  ‘Why not tell me? Why not tell the police?’ she persisted.

  ‘Wasn’t sure, was I?’ Justin grew even more defensive.

  ‘Does this barn belong to a friend of yours?’ I asked to help him out, wondering what on earth I was doing here when I should be chasing up every clue I could to Carlos’s murder.

  Justin finally cracked. ‘Look, straight in your face, OK? I should have told you before, Daisy. I reckon I know where it is, but I don’t know nothing definite. But I’ll get it back for you. I will, I promise.’

  I could see the hurt of anxious youth in his face, but even without that I felt there was something I wasn’t quite getting here.

  Most girls would have shot back some cynical remark but not Daisy. She knew when to stop. ‘I know you’ll do your best, Justie.’

  He looked at her with such adoration that my heart bled for him. Remembering that Daisy had to ‘see places’ before she would appreciate Justin, I only hoped he would wait long enough.

  I wasn’t sure that I appreciated him too much myself at the moment, though, so I moved things along by making it clear that I’d had enough. ‘I’ll drive you back, Daisy,’ I said pointedly. ‘It’s a police job.’