I LEFT LAURA’S HOUSE mid-afternoon and headed to Congleton and the police garage to which my car had been towed. My windscreen was filled with heavy clouds that swept moodily overhead, bursting with grey winter rain that, as I watched, broke and swamped the countryside like a bowl of dirty water tipped over by a clumsy hand. My wipers struggled to clear an arc for me to see through. The air in the car turned cold but I liked it and didn’t touch the heating dial.
Eventually I reached Congleton, an old town that has slowly been overgrown by creeping housing estates and pedestrianisation. I found the police garage and identified myself to a uniform at the gate. He reluctantly let me in by lifting a striped barrier. Inside the office, the duty officer stared at me while he made a phone call to fetch someone to accompany me. It turned out to be a broad-faced young woman finishing off a sandwich; a muscle in her jaw worked massively as she ate. She wasn’t particularly pleased to be interrupted and eyed me suspiciously over each mouthful until she’d finished. Then she lifted a flap in the counter and took me back through the building, along several dim yellow corridors and finally into the garage through its rear entrance.
The large echoing space reeked of ground-in oil and the smell that skin discharges when it’s been soaked in grease for years on end. Out on the floor, two young mechanics in white overalls and gloves, their hair tied behind their heads, had my Cavalier up on a ramp and were poking about underneath. The rain pounded on the roof and was already forming small lakes and rivers on the concrete forecourt visible through the huge open doors.
‘You won’t find any contraband,’ I said. ‘Unless you think I’m trying to smuggle rust across the county line.’
‘Took a bit of a bashing,’ one of the mechanics said. ‘Hit another car, did you?’ He grinned at his mate.
‘He hit me,’ I said. ‘If you look carefully, using all your training, you can spot it by the scrape on this wing.’ I pointed up to where the car’s maroon paint job had been forcibly overpainted by a dark shade.
The other mechanic let down the ramp and we congregated round the driver side front wing. It was dented and multicoloured, the damage running all down the length of the wing like a particularly vicious piece of vandalism.
On the other side, where the car had hit the post and then tipped into the ditch, the headlight was cracked and the wing and door were both dented. The smashed windscreen had already been taken out. The car was like an outclassed heavyweight that had gone a few rounds with the champion; but it was still proud.
‘Will I get it back?’ I asked.
The young woman officer raised her voice over the sound of the rain. ‘When it’s been processed. Could be a few weeks. You want us to catch the bad guy, don’t you?’
‘I’m not relying on it,’ I said. ‘Your record so far’s not impressive.’
‘Don’t take it out on me because your car’s a wreck. You’ll calm down when you get over the accident.’
‘I am over the accident. You don’t have to patronise me. What happens to the car now?’
She paused. Having finished her sandwich she was now furiously probing her gums with the end of her tongue. I could tell I’d annoyed her but she was still a public servant and I was still Joe Public. ‘We go over it, look for any inconsistencies. Eventually we’ll contact you and tell you when and where you can pick it up. You might like to contact your insurers.’
Her tone had moved from irritated to bored as a way of handling what she actually felt about me. I wasn’t having that. I took a step towards her.
‘I know you’ve done this a hundred times, but a woman could have been killed last night because of whoever was driving that other car. He did it deliberately, and he’s probably responsible for another murder and a kidnapping. So do a good job and we might see him getting his telegram from the Queen behind bars. That’ll be a result in my book.’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I know you didn’t. You weren’t really thinking at all. You’re just doing your job in the same way you’ve done it for longer than you’d like to admit, and you’re bored. I come along and disrupt your routine, and I’m a member of the public, who are not supposed to be here in the first place, so naturally you’re upset and pissed off and not thinking very clearly. I know it’s sometimes hard to remember who you’re doing all this for. You probably think you’re doing it for your boss, and his boss, and the division. But you’re wrong. You’re actually doing it for me. You’re upholding the law, but you don’t make the law. It probably seems like you do, but you don’t.’
By this time I was breathing heavily, and both the mechanics as well as the young woman were staring at me.
It seemed like a good time to leave. I went out of the open garage doors into the rain, and let it wash me down without hindrance until I reached the Corsa and allowed it to swallow me up.