Before either of them could say anything, the eight twenty from London Victoria shook the bridge.
They both stared down at the blurry black roof, blocking out the rails as it raced under their feet and through Bickley station.
In the silence that followed, the girl gave him an accusing look, but Detective Chief Inspector Marvel only shrugged.
2
‘JAMES!’
James Buck was standing with a Golf GTi balanced on a single oily hand, like a waiter bringing a main course to a car-crusher. He looked round at his boss. He hadn’t heard him coming because the garage was always loud with engines and echoes and the radio playing. And because he’d been thinking. Always thinking.
About Daniel, of course.
‘What?’ he said.
‘James!’ yelled Brian Pigeon again. ‘Ang! Turn that bloody thing down!’
Ang went over to the radio, sulkily dragging his broom, and James lowered his arm. The car stayed up without his support – floating on the hydraulic lift, with its wheels dangling from their arches, like a puppy that’s just been scooped off the floor.
The music blared very slightly less loudly.
‘You did the timing on Mr Knight’s car!’
Mr Knight had a pristine Audi TT with a chrome Billy Boat exhaust. Last time they’d had it in, someone had scraped a wing, so if something else had gone wrong with the Audi, it was serious shit. James hadn’t touched it on either occasion.
Not that that made any difference.
‘What car?’ he said blankly.
‘That one!’ Brian shouted, and jabbed a finger at the garage forecourt. ‘The one dripping oil all over my new cement.’
James didn’t look at the forecourt; he looked back up at the underside of the Golf and swallowed hard. He didn’t trust himself to answer just yet. The cement wasn’t that new. It had been poured exactly four months ago, on November fifth.
The morning of Bonfire Night.
The morning Daniel had disappeared.
He didn’t expect Brian Pigeon to know that the way he knew it, but he still hated him for thinking of that day for any other reason.
Brian was yelling again. ‘When you put the rocker cover back on you must’ve pinched the gasket. Oil everywhere. All over Mr Knight’s driveway too!’
James wouldn’t have done something so careless. It was probably Mikey who’d pinched the gasket. He was rash and speedy, and if a car wasn’t hooked up to the diagnostic computer, he was also lost. But James didn’t say any of that. He just stood there, one hand at his side with a spanner dangling from it, the other over his head as he loosened the nut with his fingers, on autopilot now.
‘What have you got to say about that then? Now the job has to be done again.’
‘Not by you!’ Mr Knight shouted from near the office. ‘You’ll pay for someone else to fix it or I’ll sue the arse off you!’
Brian ignored that. ‘What have you got to say?’ he demanded of James again.
‘Sorry?’ said James.
‘Sorry, bullshit!’ Brian shouted. ‘Mr Knight is our most valuable customer! Now we have to do the job again!’
‘You’re not touching my car’ Mr Knight insisted.
‘For free!’ Brian kept on. ‘Even for free,’ said Mr Knight. ‘I’m suing you!’
Brian ignored that and shouted at James, ‘This is the last straw. Get out.’
James let go of the Golf and wiped his brow with his elbow. ‘What?’
The spanner in his right hand suddenly felt very heavy.
‘Get your stuff and get out.’ Brian jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘You’re fired.’
There was a brief silence – or what passed for it in the garage, with the radio still playing like static under their lives.
‘Hold on,’ said Mr Knight, suddenly not so vehement. ‘I’m not … it’s not—’
Brian held up a hand. ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Knight. It’s not your fault. Your custom is far too important for me to risk losing it over some moron.’
James felt the cold steel against the ball of his thumb. The spanner was beautifully machined and perfectly balanced. He tightened his grip.
‘Seems a bit steep, firing the guy,’ said Mr Knight.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Brian. ‘Messed up your car. Messed up your driveway. Messed up my forecourt. Cost me a bloody fortune. But it’s not about the money – we’ve got a reputation. We’re professionals.’
Mr Knight shrugged and nodded – slowly understanding that sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do.
Brian turned back to look at James. ‘Are you still here? What are you waiting for? The gasket fairy?’
James turned and, with all his strength, hurled the spanner across the workshop. It bounced off a bench, then skidded across the red-painted concrete floor of Pigeon’s MoT & Diagnostics and slid into the old inspection pit with a loud metal clang. James stormed around his boss (That’s a Snap-On, you little shit!) and past Mr Knight (Made a helluva mess on my drive …) and into the scummy little kitchen.
He sat on the only chair with a padded seat – the one Brian always took. He put a foot on another of the chairs and pushed it noisily around the lino floor for a bit, and then kicked it over with a deliberate crash.
There was a Formica table, a sink unit, the wooden bench where Ang slept, and five mis-matched chairs. The table was covered with old newspapers and junk-food wrappers and a mug without a handle that Pavel and Mikey used as an ashtray. The walls were pitted and smeared with dark finger-marks. Over the microwave was a calendar that was an excuse to hang photos of topless women on the wall. None of them ever looked at it, or changed the month; it was just there as a minor male defiance.
James tipped over another chair.
All the time, he heard indistinct voices under the usual echoing noises of pop music and of engines turning over. The voices became less and less heated. Brian talking to Mr Knight; Mr Knight walking away; the back and forth of departure.