Classic Calls the Shots Page 4

  ‘I suppose she must. I think Joan was a personal chum of hers, and Margot was Bill’s property, as you must know, before Angie came along. Angie, like Joan, was an extra, and so were Chris, Brian and Graham. Tom was the storyboarder. Margot must have been quite a lady – Joan told me that Chris and Graham fancied her like mad, but they didn’t stand a chance, although like Tom they worshipped the ground she trod on. So unfortunately did her husband, I’m told. Her suicide must have hit them all hard.’

  ‘So Angie might see you as another Margot Croft?’

  She flushed. ‘Bill and I get on well – there has to be rapport between director and lead actors. Angie might have misconstrued it. Don’t make that mistake, Jack.’

  I took her hand in mine. ‘I’m a magic bullet – I go straight to the truth.’

  ‘Good. So find the Auburn.’

  I laughed, and she added, ‘Take care, Jack. The current situation is that Angie mustn’t be crossed in any way, and for the sake of the film Bill and Roger have to rise above everything that’s going on. I suppose as this is a film about revenge, Angie could be attacking the camaraderie that still lingers from Margot Croft’s days.’

  ‘Aren’t there limits?’

  ‘There are. And very soon Angie is going to reach them.’

  I drove home through the lanes to Piper’s Green like a kid after a visit to Santa Claus. I persuaded myself that despite the tantrums, there was a terrific film being shot, a terrific cast and director, and so everything was possible. No matter if there appeared to be a serpent slithering around in this paradise; it could easily be eliminated. Perhaps the nasty incidents were coincidental; perhaps the theft of the Auburn was due to some eccentric billionaire who had ‘ordered’ one. The prize for agreeing to find it was meeting Louise, and inside my pocket was a card with her mobile number on it.

  All I had to do now was find the Auburn.

  Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations operates not far from the village of Piper’s Green which is between Pluckley and Egerton on Kent’s Greensand Ridge. I live in the farmhouse and a converted barn houses the Pits, which is the workshop where my team of two do what they love best – making the insides and outsides of classic cars whole again. They know everything about that process from bumper to bumper and whether it be an old Morris Minor or a Lanchester or a de Dion Bouton it usually responds to their caring hands. Len Vickers used to be a racing mechanic, which is why the Frogs Hill workshop gained its name of the Pits. He’s wiry, sixty-something years old, a man of few words and unhurried action. His assistant Zoe Grant is just as caring, and just as slow because she loves her jobs so much she can’t bear to finish them. She’s about twenty-five, well behind Len in the age stakes, and together they make an unbeatable team. In short, the only flaw in the Frogs Hill business is the mortgage on the whole property, caused by my late father’s addiction to purchasing every piece of interesting automobilia that he came across. Hence my involvement in police work to smooth the cash flow.

  The lane to Frogs Hill is so little used that it does not rate highly on the Council’s list of needed improvements and upkeep, and the drive to the Pits is of the same standard. Any car arriving is therefore well heralded. Len and Zoe know the sound of my Alfa though, so they usually don’t even bother to look up as I come in. This time they did. I’d already told them about the missing Auburn and they had been as struck as I had been over the audacity of the thief. They had therefore promised to tap into the local automobile grapevine.

  ‘Any luck?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a toot,’ Zoe said. Len just grunted. ‘How was it?’ Zoe added, meaning of course Stour Studios.

  ‘Just short of paradise,’ I said smugly.

  Zoe looked at me quizzically. She knows me well. ‘I meant the car.’

  ‘We’ve got six days from tomorrow to find it.’ I tried to sound casual as I quickly scanned the cast lists I’d been given. They did not inspire me with hope. I had forced myself to do some thinking on the way back in between meditating about Louise. If the Auburn had been stolen to order from overseas, it must have been out of the country so quickly that Dave’s team checked too late. The theft had only been discovered at shortly after 5.45 a.m. on the Friday morning when the studios opened, and Bill went to check on the car.

  Another possibility was that the Auburn was winging its way inside a lorry to a destination somewhere in Britain. This was unlikely since so few 1935 Auburn cars come on the market that each one would be scrutinized extremely thoroughly. Bill’s was left-hand drive too, which would help identify it in a trice. The third possibility was that it was indeed a practical joke and would turn up again on Monday. I just couldn’t see that happening, however. The fourth possibility, fast becoming a probability, was that it was linked to the other incidents and might not turn up again.

  Zoe had been mulling the problem over. ‘We need outside resources, Jack. Local ones. How about Harry Prince?’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I gazed at her in astonishment. Local car dealer and businessman Harry Prince’s dearest wish in life is to see Frogs Hill fail and to make me an offer for the farmhouse, the Pits and business that I can’t refuse. Or that he thought I couldn’t.

  ‘All right then.’ She’d seen my reaction. ‘We’ll ask Rob.’

  I groaned. I liked the ‘we’ but Rob was almost as bad as Harry. He’s Zoe’s pet aristocratic layabout who unfortunately has a knack of picking up useful bits of information, provided it takes no effort. I still don’t know what he does for a living. I know how he lives though. Zoe cooks for him. What else she does, I don’t ask.

  ‘If you must,’ I said. Any port in a storm, after all – and storms there would be if I did not find that Auburn.

  THREE

  The Glory Boot is where I do my best thinking – usually, that is. It’s an extension to the farmhouse and was built by my father to house his famous automobilia collection. I only have to walk through my living room with its comfortable old sofas and bookshelves, go through a sort of boot room-cum-general dump – and then open the door to Wonderland. It’s here that my dad has left his soul. The Pits has acquired its own heady mix of high-octane fumes from the petrolheads who work there, but in the Glory Boot there is a feeling of, well, love. I have only to look at the posters, the models, the Giovanni paintings, and the loving scraps of old shop manuals to hop instantly back into my wondering childhood before I was daft enough to leave Kent for overseas and the oil business.

  So why wasn’t my mind racing round in top gear on Tuesday morning? Answer: I’d brought Louise home with me – only mentally, alas. In addition, I was aware that I couldn’t keep an open mind over this missing Auburn because it had fixed on the fourth option that at best it was no coincidence that a wave of ill-conceived pranks was hitting the studios, and at worst something far more sinister. ‘OK, son,’ my father was muttering from his photo at the wheel of his beloved MG, ‘so why the stop light?’

  What was stopping me was where my gut feeling took me. What, if I had been nutty enough to pinch an Auburn 1935 for spite, would I do with it in the short term? If I wasn’t a car lover, I would wreck it and return it so that everyone could see my handiwork – especially its proud owners. If I was a car lover, or at best someone who realized what a treasure this car was, I’d hide it somewhere unconnected with me to be found sooner or later – if it wasn’t by then destroyed by mindless vandals. I hoped that the thief was a real car lover, and would hide it away somewhere safely. Where would that be? If I were working at the studios but commuting from home, I could stick it in my own garage – but what would the neighbours say? Furthermore, that would mean my own car would still be in the studios’ car park sticking out like a Ferrari in a banger race.

  So where was the Auburn?

  Dad seemed to have stopped his advisory service, as nothing came to mind, save that if I was correct and it was pinched by someone working on the set, crew or cast, then it couldn’t be far away. Cast and crew could hardly take time off to drive
it to John O’Groats. Which merely gave me the whole of Kent and maybe a bit of East Sussex to search.

  By Monday. Now six days away.

  Time to move. Louise’s mobile number was burning a hole in my pocket but pride wasn’t going to let me use it until I had some idea of where I was going with this commission. I’d rung one of my contacts who with luck would cover the grapevine of London and the home counties, but Harry Prince was, I had to admit, the unavoidable step I’d have to take next. He runs a big flashy garage near Ashford and several others too, including his newish acquisition, the Piper’s Green garage, though he doesn’t manage it in person. That’s in Jimmy’s loyal hands. He was the former owner’s henchman and has worked there ever since Herr Daimler first decided to build a car. Jimmy prides himself on achieving the impossible over combining reliability with speed of service. I sometimes hope this will rub off on Len, but not so far. He tends to be a bit sniffy where Jimmy is concerned.

  ‘Cranked your starting handle a bit late this morning, didn’t you, Jack?’ Zoe greeted me disapprovingly. ‘Where have you been? Rob’s been waiting for you.’ There was a touch of reproach in her voice. Sometimes I think Zoe might have got the wrong end of the stick as to who owns this place. Certainly, Rob showed all the signs of possession. He strolled out from behind the Princess Vanden Plas that Zoe and Len were currently working on, and eyed me in what passes for a friendly manner for him. He is the clumsiest person around cars I’ve ever met and I eyed the Vanden Plas with trepidation as he placed his pudgy hand on the bumper to help him squeeze past. He’s not fat, exactly, he just has that well-oiled look that comes from the confidence of knowing where you stand in life, especially if it’s high up the pecking order and even if it’s not deserved. He’s shorter than me, but somehow . . . oh well, he’s Rob, that’s all, and Zoe – though not infatuated with him – accepts his presence in her life without quibble.

  So far, I thought. One day this otherwise sensible sparky girl will see the light.

  ‘Zoe says you’ve a spot of trouble with an old banger,’ Rob said carelessly.

  I froze. Old banger? ‘It’s an Auburn 851, 1935.’

  ‘That’s good, is it?’

  Even Zoe looked horrified and Len appeared to express his indignation in person, wiping his hands on the oily cloth he’s treasured from the 1960s by the look of it.

  ‘A beauty. Only ninety-odd produced. The queen of the speedsters, either supercharged or non-supercharged. Company lost money on every one of them,’ Len added admiringly.

  Naturally he approves of this approach. I sometimes think he does his best to see he follows it through with the beauty of his repairs versus the bill it finally produces.

  ‘How can I help?’ Rob said unenthusiastically.

  ‘I’ve reason to think –’ it sometimes pays to be pompous with Rob because he understands pomposity – ‘it could be still in the neighbourhood. It’s too conspicuous to escape notice for one thing, and for another I’m betting on the fact that the thief is staying locally and wouldn’t have the time to take it far.’

  ‘No Far Eastern potentates then?’

  ‘Unlikely. It’s a known car. It wasn’t featured in Running Tides itself, but it appeared in a lot of photos of the star Margot Croft. She was having an affair with its owner, the director Bill Wade.’

  Rob looked interested. ‘That one of her standing by a car with her hair blowing over her face on a Scottish moor?’

  ‘The North Downs near Folkestone in fact,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever,’ he dismissed this. ‘Why didn’t you say so earlier? Had that photo stuck on my wall as a kid. Killed herself afterwards, didn’t she?’

  ‘She did.’

  Rob shrugged. ‘Helps the image. So that was the car, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ I spat the word out with difficulty at this typical Rob observation on life and death.

  ‘I’ll help.’ He made it sound as if I should sob with gratitude, but I could see that one off.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said offhandedly.

  He grinned. ‘Don’t think I can do it, do you?’

  ‘It’s a tough one,’ I said ambiguously. ‘Especially as I have to find the Auburn by Monday.’

  He didn’t turn a single one of his mousy brown hairs. ‘Leave it with me.’

  I would, but only so far. There were lines that Rob could follow and other ones that I needed to do myself. The local pubs for one thing. There were two in Lenham, one in Sandway, not far from the studios, and another in Grafty Green on the Headcorn Road. Asking the regulars about it was a no-brainer. Its theft must have been in the dead of night, but with such an engine any car lover would be drooling at the sound even in his sleep.

  ‘By the way,’ Rob added, as thankfully he took his leave, ‘I hear the film’s being shot at Syndale Manor.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said cautiously. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Nigel Biddington’s a pal of mine.’

  He didn’t need to explain who he was. I knew. He was the son of Sir John Biddington, the owner of Syndale Manor.

  ‘He’s pretty desperate about the Auburn,’ Rob added.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  Rob grinned. ‘Firstly, he’s the car adviser on the film, and secondly he’s dating Louise Shaw.’

  I was still reeling from this news as I drove over to Charden, where Harry Prince lives. I needed to be in fighting form to seek Harry’s help, and luckily the news of Nigel Biddington had shot me out of my corner. I wanted to go out and bash the world for treating me this way. In brighter moments I told myself that there was no way I could have mistaken those signs in Louise – but then, I had to admit, I’d barely met her. How could I know?

  Charden is the far side of Pluckley almost in the Ashford suburbs, and Harry’s home is next door to one of his garages. This one was his original investment, and the house was like his choice of cars: big, monstrous, showy. The only difference is that the cars are classics and the house is modern. Once I’d fought my way through the technology that guards his house from those who would like to put Harry in his place, he greeted me quite affably. I like his wife, but there was no sign of her today.

  Harry, as I said earlier, is first in line to write a cheque for Frogs Hill Farm and the Glory Boot in particular. He too is on the big showy side. He’s also an old rascal, but when the chips are down he can be surprisingly straight. It’s when the wheel’s still spinning that one has to watch him.

  ‘What can I do for you, Jack my lad?’

  Jack his lad seethed, but I needed his help. ‘Auburn 1935, left-hand drive. Pinched from Stour Studios last Thursday night.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about it. Shouldn’t be hard to find, even for you.’ He sniggered.

  ‘What did you hear, Harry?’

  ‘Only that it had gone,’ he said hastily. ‘Public knowledge.’

  ‘Nothing more?’ I was suspicious.

  Harry looked shifty. ‘Not our fault, Jack.’

  I had been right to be wary. ‘Our fault?’

  ‘Security,’ he said carelessly. ‘I’ve got an interest in the firm that runs it. Shotsworth Security. First class, they are.’

  Harry has his fingers in so many pies it’s surprising there’s a crust left anywhere. ‘Well now,’ I said. ‘Fancy that. I’ll pop in and have a word with them. Nothing more you can tell me?’

  Harry seemed oddly relieved. ‘No, and ain’t that odd, Jack? You’d think I would have heard something.’

  ‘That’s goodish news, Harry. If you haven’t, it confirms what I think. It’s a spite job. Someone at the Studios.’

  He blenched. ‘I wouldn’t be sure of that, Jack. Hearing nothing isn’t always good.’

  He actually looked quite worried on my behalf and he was still staring after me with a somewhat puzzled look on his face as I drove away. I had no doubt that he could have told me more, but had no intention of doing so. And that was bad news.

  Next port of call was the hotel where the crew and some of the cast w
ere staying, although not the stars, who were tucked away on the Downs. Some of the crew commuted to the set daily on a need-to-attend basis, as did the extras and a few of the cast. That still left quite a number to be put up locally and Oxley Productions had taken over a big hotel on the edge of Harrietsham, the next village from Lenham on the A20 towards Maidstone. The pleasantly rural name, The Cricketers, refers to the village’s excellent cricket facilities in the early nineteenth century, which had fostered the career of Alfred Mynn, otherwise known as the Mighty Mynn or the Lion of Kent. The name was all that was rural about the hotel, which was large and modern and didn’t even try to look ancient, though it sported a few tubs of flowers around its forecourt.

  My guess was that whoever took the Auburn was probably staying here. Car commuters or local residents would face more problems over planning a theft such as that. From the hotel, however, it would be possible to walk to or from the studios, provided one didn’t mind crossing a couple of fields. That would solve the need to leave one’s own transport in the parking lot at Stour Studios. There was also, I’d been told, a bus that picked up those who needed transport in the morning and returned them at ten p.m. at the end of the filming day. That wouldn’t cover anyone who was working late, which on Thursday night, the DOP’s lists had told me, had included crew, extras and a few of the cast.

  I ordered a coffee from reception as the bar was unattended. When it arrived it was lukewarm, but it served its purpose by giving me an excuse to wander round the hotel and stroll out into the garden at the rear. That makes it sound enticingly large, which this garden was not, although it was well tailored. My interest, however, was in the car park that lay behind it. I hardly expected to find the Auburn waiting for me, but there were two lock-up garages which I eyed thoughtfully, even though the chances of the Auburn being inside were virtually nil.

  I looked up at the North Downs rising gently behind the village. From here the Downs look green and pleasant and always remind me of the Psalmist’s: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my strength.’ I know the Downs well. Narrow lanes that used to be smuggling and trading routes criss-cross them, and in between are hamlets and isolated farms aplenty. Any one of them could be hiding the Auburn. Beautiful though the Downs look, man has tampered with them; they have been fought over, dug up for quarries, and used to hide crime from prying eyes for thousands of years. They are timeless and they like you to know it, so it can be eerie up there as well as beautiful. Despite my addiction to cars, I love walking, but on the Downs, particularly in some areas, I often feel my steps quickening and it seems hard to realize that civilization – if one can call it that – is so near at hand. History and prehistory not only lie here, they shout at you.