12

I wasn’t just livid. I was devastated.

Shallow as it might have seemed, rusted though it certainly was, that car had been the driving force behind my aspirations ever since I’d been homeless, when I’d first come across an identical, brand-new model owned by a barrister back in 1987. To me, it was more than a vehicle. It was a turning point in my youth, a physical reward in my thirties, a trusted companion in later life and the only thing I’d kept from the divorce.

Now it was ruined.

The furious hooligan of my past wanted revenge; it seemed obvious to me that Deacon had lured us into a trap and then called for backup. The seasoned barrister of my present insisted that Deacon might not have been to blame.

Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong decision to follow him at all.

I was out of my flat half an hour before sunrise on Wednesday morning, sometime around six, hoping to get the car moved before the roads started to fill. Already there were a couple of early starters dressed in suits hovering on the pavement beside the Jag, muttering between themselves. I couldn’t blame them. Despite dumping it as far away from the nearest street light as I could manage, it didn’t look any better than when I’d left it there last night.

The rear window was shattered over the back seats. Deep white cracks rippled across the windows and quarter glass of both rear doors. The driver’s door was dented, the passenger side scratched. A headlight was broken. There were no wing mirrors to speak of and only a hole from where the jaguar itself had once leapt.

‘Morning,’ I said politely, stepping between the onlookers to unlock the door.

‘M-morning?’ one of them said.

‘Supposed to be another warm one today,’ I noted, climbing in behind the wheel.

The man cleared his throat. ‘That’s … That’s great.’

I nodded. ‘Well, have a good one,’ I said and shut the door.

The car started, which was a blessing, though without an exhaust it sounded like heavy artillery fire and the bystanders recoiled a couple of feet. The chassis shook so furiously that one of the cracked panes collapsed inwards from the door directly behind me. I flared the one headlight as if I hadn’t noticed, waved a casual farewell, then chuntered slowly up the road.

I’d been searching online for a reliable mechanic when the idea had come to me. It wasn’t the most sensible thing to do, driving east across the centre of the city, but it seemed to have at least a little poetic value, so I rattled all the way to Hackney Wick.

It was a peculiar spot for a garage, I thought, inexplicably tucked away on Rothbury Road between a few discount furniture warehouses and an enormous building site advertising a complex of unfinished spacious apartments for sale. The entire length of the building site was hidden behind panelling that was, in turn, smothered in vibrant graffiti. Right alongside that, camouflaged in the same palette of spray paint, was a garage with a small, almost imperceptible sign: Meadows Motors.

The place didn’t open until eight – it was a couple of minutes past seven – but I’d only just managed to get the car up against the kerb when the garage door lifted, and Charli’s brother came out like a hungry man to the sound of a dinner bell. He was dressed in a beanie hat and overalls and his face widened into something between a horrified gape and a grin when he saw the mess I was driving; the pound signs were practically visible in his eyes. From behind him, another mechanic appeared, this one remarkably handsome with long red hair, a Norse deity of a man who was apparently apathetic to the cacophony.

‘Elliot Rook!’ Delroy Meadows said as I got out of the car. ‘What’d you do, enter into one of those demolition derbies?’

‘Kids,’ I replied. ‘Think you can work some magic on her?’

He drew air between his teeth in a pained hiss and circled the car, admiring the mob’s handiwork with a stern, appraising look. ‘Well, she’s never going to dance again.’

‘A write-off?’ The air caught in my throat.

‘Hard to say for sure without getting underneath her for a look.’

‘Whatever it takes.’

He turned to his employee and gesticulated with both hands, signing. The employee did the same back. They conversed silently like that. For a moment, I had the funny idea that this was a neat trick, something they’d learned between themselves to privately discuss how badly they could fleece their customers. But mechanics would never need to go to such lengths to have a customer’s pants down.

Delroy caught my eye. ‘Danny here’s a deaf-mute. Like that pinball song.’

‘I think that’s a rather outdated way of putting it,’ I told him.

He shrugged. ‘Who’s he going to tell?’

Danny, who had been watching our lips closely, pointed a finger at Delroy and then began to beat his own chest with both fists like a gorilla. They both laughed, Danny silently, and shadow-boxed one another. I felt acutely out of place.

Delroy checked his watch. ‘We’ve got a couple of MOTs in this morning but, as my sister’s future rests squarely on your shoulders … Come inside and I’ll get you a coffee. Leave your keys with the Pinball Wizard over here.’

I removed the car key from the ring and Danny caught it one-handed.

Inside a back office, Delroy poured us coffees from a twenty-year-old machine that sounded like a circular saw. There was a simple desk on a carpet that was blackened and greasy with boot prints, and a shelf of motoring manuals. The place smelled of oil, iron and leather, the perfumes of hard graft. There was an interior window overlooking the garage floor. I watched Danny, who was down on one knee peering up at the bottom of my raised car. He was shaking his head. His face was almost ageless; he could’ve been anywhere between twenty and fifty.

‘Here,’ Delroy said, handing me the coffee.

‘Appreciate it.’ The cup was thin white plastic; I used my cuff to shield my palm from the heat.

‘Hope this has got nothing to do with your job?’

‘Mindless vandalism, that’s all.’

‘Huh.’ He cocked his head. ‘You take it to the police yet?’

‘No. The police and I have a turbulent relationship at the best of times.’

Delroy sipped his own drink, oblivious to the scald, and watched Danny work. ‘We have a bit of banter, me and him, but he’s a good lad. Came here a couple of years ago, recommendation from one of them communication charities, and never left. Like a partner to me now. The guy’s a genius with a spray gun.’

‘He looks like he knows what he’s doing. Have you always known sign language?’

‘Few phrases, that’s all. It looks as if I know a lot more than I really do. I went to – shit, I don’t even know what you’re supposed to call it these days – a special school. Had a couple of deaf kids in my class. I wasn’t the brightest boy. Suppose that’s why I get a little bitter with Charli sometimes. She must’ve got the bigger slice of brains when we were in the womb, but she’s never done anything with them.’

I froze, with the coffee at my lips. ‘I didn’t realise you were twins.’

He shrugged. ‘Since before we were born.’

I was quiet for a moment, reflecting on what Patch had told us about Roy Macey and his mysterious twins. The Meadows twins? It seemed highly unlikely, not least on the incongruity of race. Adopted? Equally unlikely … Wasn’t it? I must’ve been staring quite intently because Delroy rolled his eyes and shook his head.

‘Before you ask,’ he said, ‘the answer is no.’

‘No?’

‘No. We can’t read each other’s minds and we don’t share bruises or none of that.’

‘Oh.’ I smiled. ‘Well, I did wonder.’

He took another long sip of coffee, breathing heavily through his nose. ‘Look, if I came across a bit abrupt the other morning …’

‘It must be a stressful time.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. It’s like your car over there, in a way. To me, that car’s just another job on the worksheet. For you, those wheels are your way of life. Vice versa – to you, my sister is another couple of weeks in the courthouse. For her, for us all, it could be her life. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘I do.’

‘She’s not a bad woman by any means. She’s a great mum. Just got herself a habit for making crap decisions. Men, mostly.’ Over his cup, he gave me a shrewd look; so he knew about my visit to the allotment last night.

‘She lied about him,’ I said. ‘Deacon. You both did.’

‘Her decision.’

‘Doesn’t look very good from where I’m standing.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I suppose it doesn’t.’

I had half an urge to seize him by the overalls, to scream all manner of obscenities regarding what I would like to do to his prospective brother-in-law. ‘She said nobody else had access to that car,’ I managed coolly. ‘I can’t see it being too difficult for this Deacon to have got hold of her keys.’

Delroy shook his head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. At the time it happened, it would’ve been pretty damn difficult for him to get anywhere near that car.’

‘Why’s that?’

He swirled his coffee, contemplating. ‘She didn’t tell you how they met?’

‘No.’ It took another few seconds for the pieces to come together. ‘Not the Scrubs?’

He nodded regretfully. ‘Deacon only got out last month.’

‘Drugs?’

He blinked: yes.

‘That explains her reluctance to introduce him from the beginning,’ I said.

‘Can’t blame her, can you?’

I shrugged. ‘Financially, he appears to be doing rather well since his release. Would it be so unreasonable to suggest that she might’ve been taking the Spice in to him all along?’

He turned his whole body to lean back against the window. ‘What do you expect me to say to that? She’s my sister.’

‘She doesn’t seem to be demonstrating much caution towards their relationship. I’ve only been up to her home once and I’ve already met him by chance. There’s no mention of him in the prosecution’s case, nothing that has been disclosed so far at least, but if they do become aware of this relationship, well, I’d say it writes a rather convincing story.’

‘And are you obliged to tell them?’

I met his eye. ‘Is that a legal question? Or an ethical one?’

He bowed his head over his drink, preparing to take another mouthful, then a sharp knock on the glass behind caused him to jump and spill coffee onto his overalls. He spun round so that his employee could read his lips when he shouted. ‘For fuck’s sake, Danny!’

Danny was standing on the other side, looking deeply concerned. With his left hand he was holding up a mass of twisted metal that dangled from his grip like a pheasant’s carcass. It took me a second to recognise what it was: a mangled fusion of exhaust pipe, chain and a single bicycle pedal.

‘Jesus,’ Delroy said. ‘We’re not going to find one of these kids underneath there, are we?’

I left the car there along with my phone number and walked a block north to Hackney Wick Station, passing the Lord Napier, the nineteenth-century pub that was now also obscured by graffiti. One of the most noticeable pieces read Shithouse to Penthouse. I was feeling quite the opposite.

From the station, I had to take the Overground west to Stratford, where I would then be able to change onto the Central Line heading back east towards chambers. It was eight o’clock now and the platforms were crowded. I managed to get a seat on the Overground, but my sheer size pressed against strangers on either side, and when my phone rang in my pocket I almost couldn’t get my hand down to reach it. For a split second I imagined it would be Delroy Meadows telling me that they had indeed found part of a child tangled up in one of the wheel arches, and that the Met was on its way.

Thankfully, it was Zara. Conscious of my elbows, I slid the phone up to my ear. ‘Yes?’

‘How did it go?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they found one of that little shit’s bicycle pedals caught up in my rear wheel, so I’ll be amazed if I’m not in handcuffs by the end of the day.’ At this, those sitting nearest glanced up from their phones. I resolved to keep my voice down. ‘Where are you now?’

‘Just coming up to chambers. Are we still going to Belmarsh to meet this drug dealer?’

‘Isaac Reid. Yes, I’m on my way to meet you now.’

‘How are we supposed to get there?’

I sighed. ‘I can think of a number of unattractive options involving public transport. Black cab, I suppose.’

‘Uber’s cheaper.’

‘As is using slave labour instead of paying the London living wage, but my conscience votes for black cab.’

‘If only our legal system shared your conscience, then I might actually have an income.’