The Returned Dead. Rafe Kronos

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ drove, I managed to grab a parking place a few streets away.”

      “You were lucky, parking’s awful around here.” I glanced at my watch. “I could do with a breath of fresh air. I’ll walk with you to your car if you don’t mind.”

      I didn’t need fresh air but I did want to observe how he behaved away from my office. You can learn a lot about a man by observing how he behaves in the street, seeing if he avoids eye contact with passers-by, if he dislikes it when people walk close behind him, watching how he checks where he is, which shops attract his attention or even how he crosses the road.

      That’s the theory but in this instance, as we walked along together, all I managed to learn was that Baxendale seemed to be a more or less normal human being -- apart from being two people at once, of course -- there was that. He walked steadily, crossed the road with the normal amount of care and occasionally glanced sideways to look in a variety of shop windows. None of it was very informative. Still, I consoled myself, it was early days yet. Tomorrow I’d start digging and find out what all this was about.

      It took us about ten minutes to get to his car. When I saw it, I was both surprised and impressed. I like cars and this one was a classic, a 1950s Bristol 403. Aluminium bodied, I recalled, and powered by a superb high performance engine based on one that BMW had created just before the Second World War. In 1945 the victorious British grabbed the BMW engine blueprints and machine tools and gave them to Bristol, a firm that had spent the war making aero-engines and planes to destroy the Third Reich. It was a nice reward for all their patriotic efforts. It was a wonderful engine; the great Mike Hawthorn had raced a Bristol-powered Cooper on his way to becoming a Ferrari works driver and 1958 World Champion.

      I gazed at Baxendale’s car with admiration and envy. The body was beautifully streamlined, a product of Bristol’s aircraft designing experience and their wind-tunnel testing. It was painted an immaculate dark blue, a colour that emphasised its sleek lines. Dark blue: there was blue again, I thought. The inside of the vehicle was like a gentleman’s club: all red leather and polished wood. Superb.

      Although it was about sixty years old the car looked as if it had just rolled off the production line. It must have been restored recently; the restorer had done a wonderful job.

      “That’s a lovely machine,” I commented. I felt another twinge of envy as I gazed at it. Then I reminded myself one of the reasons why I like cars: if they are wrecked you can rebuild them – unlike people. I suppose liking machines is a sort of escape from the burdens of responsibility we take for other humans.

      He smiled at the car and then at me. “It was a gift from Debby, a lovely, lovely gift.” His smile broadened and then he chuckled; he was almost hugging himself with pleasure. “A gift, it was a lovely gift from Debby” he repeated.

      My God, I thought, they are rich. Some gift: the car must have cost more than thirty- grand. Lucky for some. I wondered what it would be like to have a beautiful wife who gave such magnificent presents. I’ll never know since I’ll never have a wife, not now.

      “Right,” I said, “I’ll start on your investigation as soon as I’ve tidied up what I’m currently working on. Once I’ve got through my preliminary inquiries I’ll need to ask you a lot more questions. How are you fixed the day after tomorrow? Can you come in at about two?”

      I smiled innocently at him as though I had no suspicion that he had just sat in my office telling me a mountain of lies.

      “Sure, two it is.” He sounded pleased. “You’ve no idea how relieved I am that you’ve taken the job, Mr Dawson. I feel I’ve actually started to do something about all this. Thanks, eh?”

      I looked into his face and saw the sweat on his forehead and hair had gone. He held out his hand and I shook it.

      He nodded at me and got into the car. The engine started with a deep growl. As he drove away it grew harsher, a spine-tingling sound that someone had once describes as a lion’s roar filtered through silk -- which shows that even petrol heads can produce touches of poetry.

      I watched till he was out of sight, memorised the registration number, and started back towards the office, deeply troubled.

      It was obvious that there was something very wrong here. Baxendale’s story was unbelievable. Yet the newspaper photo seemed to prove he was Jack Rankin and he had seemed completely sincere when he told his preposterous story. If he was lying he had done a first rate job. But then, I asked myself, why would a liar give me fifteen thousand pounds to investigate -- and almost certainly to disprove -- his fantastic story? It made no sense; that worried the hell out of me.

      Well, I told myself, no doubt everything would become much clearer once I started to investigate. I was sure I would be able to disprove his tale pretty quickly and then I could concentrate on solving the real mystery: why had he spun this fantastic yarn and given me fifteen thousand pounds?

      I sometimes have very stupid ideas. Looking back I can see this was one of my very worst.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      It’s all about deceit: most of my job is investigating deceit. I’m good at it because I have spent years deceiving others. In that time I learned that it is often best if you can get people to deceive themselves. Now that trick helps me make money. Take my firm’s location, for example. Most people think private investigators operate out of grubby offices over kebab shops or next door to seedy mini-cab firms. By contrast my firm, Charles Dawson and Co., occupies Twelve Hanover Crescent, a three storey Georgian house in the middle of one of Chester’s most handsome terraces. When I was setting up the business I calculated that the place’s age and elegance would persuade people that my firm was both old established and respectable – and it does. The council rates I pay on the building make my eyes water but the place works its silent deceit on clients: only the rich bother to turn and to hire us.

      I stopped and looked across the road towards our premises and smiled as I thought how my neighbours helped us without knowing it. The house to the left serves as the offices of Carter, Carter, Blake and Carter, solicitors of frigid and rigid respectability since the days of Queen Victoria. On our right resides Sir Blair Hunter, a choleric retired university Vice-Chancellor who lives with his crushed wife and his braying daughter. Sir Blair sits on all sorts of important committees and I feel that a little of his eminence rubs off on my firm. Occasionally one of his visitors notes our existence and later brings us their business. Thank you, Sir Blair.

      It is good to have such a fine building to work in although I have mixed feelings about the city itself. Even after four years here Chester, the ancient Roman city of Deva, still strikes me as an odd place. Too often it feels like a smug self-regarding matron, pulling in her skirts to escape contagion from nearby rough Birkenhead and even rougher Liverpool across the Mersey. Some days I like its Roman walls, the beautiful race course overlooking the gentle curves of the River Dee, even the stumpy red sandstone cathedral – though aren’t cathedrals meant to soar? – and I enjoy the way they all contribute to its air of calm prosperity. On other days I recall what keeps me tied to the city and everything about it becomes a flimsy façade hiding dark horrors.

      Still, despite its superficial calmness the city does throw up plenty of work for us. An added source of work is the surrounding countryside which is waist deep in millionaires. Not a few of them are footballers, testosterone soaked young men who have great trouble keeping their trousers on. We get a lot of lucrative divorce work from wives in that section of the community. Some of the cases СКАЧАТЬ