At the car rental shop, Steve is on the front desk. We nod at each other. I wave my agreement.
‘Can I just get the cheque, please?’ I ask, which I think is quite funny. Steve doesn’t get it, or at least he doesn’t laugh. He clearly doesn’t go to restaurants often enough. Not like me, Adam and Nicole.
‘I’ll get Prakesh,’ he says, and disappears into the backroom.
I see there are two cardboard boxes on the front desk with my name on. One ‘Dan docs’ and one ‘Dan stuff’, lids sellotaped down. How thoughtful of them to package these up for me. I start to slit the opening to ‘Dan stuff’ with my keys – or actually, now I look at them, Ally’s keys. How they came to be in my hands is a mystery to me, but I might as well make use of them now. The box is too small to contain a Maserati, but it’s still intriguing. I’m about to lift the lid when Steve reappears with Prakesh.
‘Those aren’t for you, Dan,’ says Prakesh, gesturing at the boxes.
‘How can they not be for me? They have my name on,’ I challenge.
‘Yeah, but they don’t say “Dan’s stuff”, do they? Just “Dan stuff”,’ Prakesh retorts.
‘But who else would be interested in Dan stuff?’ I ask.
‘I’m not able to disclose that information,’ Prakesh says.
They are probably starting a bonfire. That, or DC Huhne has been here.
I ask which it is. Prakesh does a little zipping motion along his lips, a bit like a body bag, but probably to denote silence (which is like a body bag too). But I see Steve wriggle a bit when DC Huhne is mentioned. So. She has expressed an interest in me. The question is: what interests her? The same thing that fixates Nicole, or the Ally incident? I can hardly ask Prakesh or Steve that. So I change tack.
‘The agreement doesn’t say you can have this stuff,’ I say, which is supposition really, because I’m only going on what Mr McNulty told me.
‘It doesn’t say we can’t,’ says Prakesh. ‘You’re waiving all your rights under the agreement.’
‘Not all of them,’ I say, thinking of liberty.
‘Okay, so you’re not waiving your rights to personal injury claims, but everything else.’
I’m not sure what claims I have to personal injury. Luke may have more. I’d be happy to waive both of them, to be untraceable: ‘I waive all rights to claim either I or my creation have personally injured anyone in the making of my art’. But I understand why I cannot do that. Even if Prakesh does not.
Still, I would like those boxes.
There are two ways to get what you want. One is to take it. The other is to pretend you don’t want it, but get it anyway, an indirect route. Over the years, I have become a master of both. Hence, book three. And indeed, book four.
In this scenario, I think I need an indirect route. I hatch a plan: once we have signed the agreement, I will order a cab without telling the others – wait around the corner for it. Then, when it comes, I will tell the driver I have a bad back, and ask him to go and collect the boxes for me. He can say, ‘Boxes for Huhne? I’ve been sent to collect them.’ Then I will have them, and DC Huhne won’t. True, when Huhne does eventually turn up, they will figure out something has happened, but by that point, the boxes will be in a bonfire of my own creation. Whatever’s in them.
Prakesh leads me into the back office and shuts the door. As he does so, I hear the shop door tinkle. A customer. Or Huhne? I try to catch a glimpse but our door is already shut.
We do a little signing ceremony. Or rather, we get out biros and scribble dates. Then Prakesh hands me a cheque. What I was expecting, but nice to see. I have plans for this money, the first this afternoon. After the boxes, and the taxi fare, of course.
‘Have you seen Jimmy recently?’ I ask, as we are standing up.
Prakesh shakes his head.
‘Good to keep in touch with old colleagues, though, right?’ I say.
‘Not always,’ Prakesh replies.
‘Perhaps I should pay him a visit,’ I say. Or just the Maserati. I would like to visit that.
But when Prakesh shows me back to the front desk, it’s not the Maserati I’m thinking of. It’s the boxes. And why they have gone.