Val McDermid - Crack Down

‘It’d be cruel to tell you,’ I said. ‘You’d only be upset because you couldn’t use it.’

Alexis shook her head, a rueful smile twitching the corners of her mouth. ‘You know me too well, girl.’

I stood on the pavement outside the Golden Ganges, watching Alexis’s car pull away from the kerb into a death-defying U-turn. The air was heavy with the fumes of traffic and curry spices, the sky bleak and overcast, the distant sounds of police and ambulance sirens mingling with the wail of a nearby car alarm. I turned the corner of the side-street where I’d left my car, and the ululations of the alarm increased dramatically. It took me a moment or two to realize that it was my car that was the focus of attention for the two black lads with the cordless hand-drill.

‘Hey, shitheads,’ I yelled in protest, breaking into a run without even thinking about it.

They looked up, uncertainty written all over their faces. It only took them seconds to weigh up the situation and decide to leg it. If it had been after dark, they probably would have brazened it out and tried to give me a good kicking for daring to challenge their right to my stereo. Shame, really. I had so much pent-up frustration in me that I’d have relished the chance to show them my Thai boxing skills weren’t just for keeping fit.

By the time I reached the car, they were round the next corner. The mashed metal of the lock wasn’t ever going to make sweet music with a key again. I pushed the control button that stopped the alarm shrieking. Sighing, I pulled the door open and climbed in. At least having the lock replaced would kill one of the hours I couldn’t find a way to fill usefully. Before I started the engine, I called Handbrake the mechanic, checked he’d collected the Beetle without a hitch and told him I needed a new driver’s door lock. That way, I wouldn’t have to hang around answering his phone while he nipped out to collect the part.

I turned left on to Oxford Road and headed away from the city centre. I was clear of the curry zone in a few minutes, and straight into the heart of university residences and student bedsits. I pushed the eject button on the stereo. Goodbye Julia Fordham. Plangent and poignant was just what I didn’t need right now. I raked through my cassettes and smacked the Pet Shop Boys’ Discography into the slot. Perfect. A thrusting beat to drive me onwards and upwards, an emotional content somewhere below zero. At the Wilbraham Road lights, I cut across to Kingsway and over to Heaton Mersey where Handbrake operates out of a pair of lock-ups behind a down-at-heel block of flats. Handbrake is a mate of Dennis’s who’s been team mechanic to Mortensen and Brannigan for a few years now. And, for his sins, he also gets to play with Richard’s Beetle. He’s called Handbrake because he used to be a getaway driver for armed robbers, and he specialized in 180-degree handbrake turns when the pursuit got a bit too close for comfort. He did a six-stretch back in the early eighties, and he’s gone straight ever since. Well, only a bit wobbly. Only now and again.

There was a Volkswagen Golf in one of Handbrake’s two garages. As I pulled up, Handbrake emerged from under the bonnet. Anyone less likely to adopt the anonymous role of a getaway driver it would be hard to imagine. He’s got flaming red curls as tight as a pensioner’s perm and a face like a sad clown. He’d have no chance in an identity parade unless the cops brought in a busload of Ronald McDonalds. Handbrake wiped his hands on his overalls and gave me a smile that made him look like he was about to burst into tears.

‘Gobshites get you?’ he greeted me.

‘Caught them in time to save the stereo,’ I told him, leaving the door open behind me.

‘That’s saved you a few bob, then. The lad’ll be back with the locks any minute,’ Handbrake said, giving the door the judicious once-over. ‘Nice clean job, really.’

‘No problem with the Beetle?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. Piece of piss. I left it outside your house, stuck the keys back through the letter box. Mr Music out of town, is he?’ I was saved from lying by the arrival of a young black kid on a mountain bike. ‘All right, Dobbo?’ Handbrake called out.

The lad hauled back on his handlebars to pull up in midwheelie. ‘My man,’ he affirmed. He shrugged out of a smart leather backpack and took a new set of locks for my Peugeot out of it. He handed it to Handbrake, quoted what seemed to be an interestingly low price and added on a tenner for delivery. Handbrake pulled a wad out of his back pocket and counted out the cash. The lad zipped it into his leather bum bag and cycled off. At the corner, he stopped and took out what looked like a mobile phone. He hadn’t looked a day over fourteen.

‘Don’t take offence, Handbrake, but these parts aren’t a little bit moody, are they?’ I hate having to be such a prissy little madam, but I can’t afford to be caught out with a car built from stolen spares.

Handbrake shook his head. ‘Nah. Him and his mates have got a deal going with half the scrap yards in Manchester. Product of the recession. Not so much drugs around, not so much dosh to be made ferrying them round the town, so Dobbo and a couple of his mates spent some of their ill-gotten gains on a computer. One of them checks with the scrap yards every morning to see what new stock they’ve got in. Then when punters like me want a part, we ring in and the dispatcher works out where they can get it from and sends one of the bike boys off for it. Good game, huh?’

‘You’re not kidding.’ I watched Handbrake pop the remains of the lock out of my car door. ‘Handbrake? You know anybody on the drugs scene that moves their merchandise in stolen motors?’

Handbrake snorted. ‘Ask me another. I try not to know anything about drugs in this town. Like the man said, a little learning is a dangerous thing.’ Handbrake did A Level English while he was inside. Who says prison doesn’t change a man?

‘OK. How would someone get hold of a set of trade plates?’

‘You mean if you’re not a legitimate person?’

‘Why would I be asking you about legitimate people?’

He snorted again. ‘Well, you can’t just cobble them together in a backstreet workshop. It’s only the Department of Transport that makes them, and the numbers are die-stamped into the metal, not like your regular licence plates. You’d have to beg, borrow or steal. There’s enough of them around. You could nick them off a garage or a motor in transit, though that way they’d be reported stolen and you wouldn’t get a lot of mileage out of them. Beg or buy a loan of a set off a delivery driver. Best way is to borrow them off a slightly dodgy garage. Why, you need some?’

Handbrake likes to wind me up by pretending he’s the innocent abroad and I’m the villain. But I wasn’t in the mood for it right then. ‘No,’ I snarled. ‘But I think I might be about to deprive someone of some.’

‘Better be careful where you use them, then.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos you’ll get a tug is why. The traffic cops always pull you if you’re using trade plates. Not so much on the motorway, but defo if you’re cruising round. If they so much as think you’re using them for anything except demos, tuition or delivery, you’ve had it. So you better have a good cover story.’

I was glad of the tip. I didn’t think this was the right weekend for a roadside chat with the traffic division.

I kicked my heels for the best part of an hour in Ruth’s waiting room while she was dealing with a client. I’d have been better employed catching up on my sleep. After I’d stood on for a major bollocking for my outrageous behaviour at Longsight nick, we sat glumly staring at each other across her cluttered desk, depressed by the lack of information we had to trade. ‘I suspect the officers actually working the case don’t believe a word Richard’s saying,’ Ruth said. ‘All I get is the condescending wink when I suggest that if they really want to make a major drugs bust they should be on the phone to every villain who’s ever grassed in his life. Anything to get a lead on the car thieves. But of course, they don’t really believe in the car thieves,’ she added cynically. ‘The one lucky break we have so far is that none of the police officers we’ve dealt with has made the connection between Richard and you. At least the superintendent is prepared to go along with the idea of a lie-down, even though he stressed that it was for his team’s benefit and not mine.’