Driving in the Dark.

Sample this! Part of a new short mystery story

by Declan O’Reilly.

Jon sat opposite me. A bulky, grey bearded man aged somewhere between 50 and 60, wearing a heavy, dark, workman’s jacket and one of those flat military style caps, at that time much favoured by the gay fraternity. Jon was hardly homosexual, but he liked to keep people guessing, it appealed to his sense of humour, which was often tinged with a malicious cruelty. Slowly he poured a measure of clear liquid from a discrete silver hip flask, grinning cheekily, as though at some private joke the rest of us were not privy to, my friend raised the vodka to his thin lips and downed the fiery spirit in one go. He sat back into the corner of the cracked wooden booth; his heavy black coat made a powerful contrast with the shabby red leather and chipped pine of the seat. Pausing only to replenish his glass Jon began to talk. ‘Shall I tell you a story,’ he asked innocently. His soft voice had a sibilant tone that made you strain to hear. Even more so if one had to contend with the noisy cacophony of the Tufnell Park Tavern on a Friday night. I looked up from my habitual half-pint of cheap larger and found his icy grey eyes regarding me curiously. He was clearly in his element, a captive audience, albeit of one, a glass of Stolyichna in his hand, and an opinion on everything: I groaned inwardly. Jon had the con-man's easy gift of granting you his confidence, a special sleight of tongue that set credulity against better judgement leaving the former the inevitable victor. No matter how many times I reminded myself that his stories were just that: stories, I felt myself falling under that familiar spell. Jon’s tales were never the whole truth but then they weren’t all untruth either, rather they were a nether realm, situated somewhere between reality and falsehood where the even the wary tread with caution, lest they might be led into error by a desperate need to believe.

"Secrets and lies, in politics it's all the same." The statement crashed through my musings like a brick shattering a thin glass pane. I was only listening with half an ear. We had been talking about Maggie's visit to Moscow: those balmy days before the wall crumbled into dust and split history in half. Before too our ‘New World Disorder’, which doubtless will become messier with each passing year. To everyone's surprise Ma T. had gone down a bomb. Nasha Maggie the Russian's called her and cheered as she walked through Red Square replete in fur coat and Shapka. It amazed me, after all the Red hordes had only just got over calling her the Iron Lady. Jon's astonishment was even greater. He always claimed to be a card-carrying member of the Tory party, a real Thatcherite in spirit, except he couldn't stand the lady herself, never did, not even at the start; perhaps it was because she was a woman. Jon, despite his obsession with sex, did not actually like women as people. True there wasn't much he did like, but there was an underlying misogyny about him that was hard to fathom. Mrs Thatcher was a woman, so ergo, there was something unsound about her, regardless of whether she was sound on anything else.

"Suspicious lot our Sov friends, always think the worst of other people. Got a real bee in their bonnets that everybody else is trying to do them down." His words broke my new mental digression, this time on the erotic appeal of a blond girl that had just walked into the pub and was standing in my line of sight at the bar. I hastened to agree by bobing my head in an illusion of perspicacity. "I should know, I fought the buggers, in Germany, after the war." I must have looked incredulous because he grinned again, in that extraordinarily superior manner only an English ex-public schoolboy, of whatever age, assumes to his social inferiors, which includes virtually everyone else on the planet. "That's another story though." Despite the smile there was no mirth in his dead grey eyes. "Even after all these years they want to believe we'll do the dirty on them. Why? Because they'd do it straight back, soon as look at us." He stared me hard in the face and I nodded sagely. I was well used to this right wing paranoia pose, which always presaged some serious comment. "Thing is they might be right!"

"You mean we wouldn't!" I replied a little too quickly.

"Have a drink dear boy and I'll tell you a secret.” For a brief second my heart faltered, secrets from Jon were unwelcome, they had a nasty habit of embroiling me in activities which were, let us say, questionable. He rushed on as if to avoid me waylaying his train of thought with a well chosen but tart comment.

"It's a long story. It all started because I needed a new car."

Jon was off and running and there was little I could do to stop him so, by some unspoken but certainly mutual consent, we settled into the comfortable position of sage and listener. "At that time I had finished university and was doing pupilage. I had this notion of being a barrister; too much reading about Marshall Hall I dare say." Jon was won't to use the odd old-fashioned or simply archaic expression just for the sake of being different. He relished his self-appointed role as gadfly and his elaborate formality of speech, much like another fabled character from fiction, also just missed being absurd. Absurd or not it was designed to get a reaction. Provocation of one kind or another was his raison d'etre and I had learned that one could never take what he said quite at face value. Nothing about Jon, not even his name was exactly what it seemed. He continued in that quiet even tone, which indicated some revelation, might be in the offing. Jon's revelations, statements or stories, call them what you like, were always enlightening and despite my vocal complaints I was still young enough, or perhaps naive enough, to be flattered by his willingness to dispense them to me.

"You see, I had to have a vehicle; visiting outlying courts with my pupil master was a complicated business and public transport couldn't always be relied upon. I was a young man, younger than you are now and not a little vain. I certainly had no desire to gad about in an Austin 7. I needed a damn sight better car than that, one that would impress girls. Girls of my station would just about get into a chap's MG or at worst an Austin Healy, mind you I always thought it a classy sort of car. I couldn't afford one of those even second hand so I was a bit stuck. Eventually, a friend of mine!” He stopped for a moment, and actually looked embarrassed, then continued a little hesitantly. “I had suddenly acquired a wide circle of acquaintances, of more than dubious provenance as a consequence of my profession. My friend told me about police auctions. These were sales of former police squad cars or transport impounded by the authorities because they had been used in crimes, which their proper owners were unwilling or unable to reclaim. In those days vehicle auctions were held all the time in central London and good bargains could be picked up, if not with ease, then certainly with a little application. The long and the short of it is this, one Saturday morning in late 1950 I went along to the West End Central police auction, held, rather thoughtfully I felt, in Scotland Yard's car park. Austerity was still the order of the day, nearly six years after the war had ended. Britain was grey and grimy. Mild reformist socialism was in power and things looked bleak. I had finished university that summer and had joined Lincoln's Inn. Though money was tight, well as tight as a small private income would allow, life could still be enjoyed. I decided to give myself an early Christmas present and went along to a car auction. It was much like any other auction, or rather not at all as I might have imagined it. Instead of a grease monkey in flat cap and overalls, the auctioneer was a dapper, if cadaverous, city gent, in pin stripes and bowler. The first car out was an elegant black Rover, which had been used in smuggling. The bidding began.

We were a small bunch, perhaps a dozen men 'in the trade' and me. I was with my friend Derek, a registered second-hand car dealer. Derek was a genial cove, about my own age; we'd met through a racecourse gangster my pupil master had successfully defended against a charge of malicious wounding. Derek, or Del to give him his more common monicker, probably skated close by the wind, but that didn't seem to worry the present company. Nor had he recourse to use my prospective chambers' services, well, not at that particular moment.

The bidding was heavy and I missed one or two good cars until they brought up lot number 30, an Aston Martin Lagonda. Built in 1940 it had been a police car from the second it had rolled out of the factory gates. Police pursuit cars are usually driven into the ground, which naturally is why they're cheap, but the Lagonda looked good. Gleaming black with a long bonnet and polished chrome headlamps. I fell in love immediately. I had to have it. My budget for the auction was £15, even that was going to stretch my resources quite a lot. I checked the auction catalogue, the car was listed as AM Lagonda, 1940, good mechanical condition. I thought that I could just about afford her. The reserve was £10 and I waited to see who would bid. A large man, who bore a close resemblance to a pulverised pugilist, wearing a well-cut grey double-breasted suit lifted his folded newspaper slightly, the auctioneer, obviously no amateur, instantly spotted the movement and the contest was on. "

"We start at ten, ten I'm bid, any advance on ten."

I looked at the pugilist and raised my hand. The increments would be ten bob a time, which gave me ten goes to win the Aston. The cadaverous face smiled. It was going to be a fight. "Ten pounds, ten shillings" he intoned. The pugilist's finger moved and the auctioneer pounced.

"Eleven pounds, any advance on eleven pounds."

To my intense disquiet a midget, in a bowler hat two sizes too big for him, entered the fray. The price climbed relentlessly to thirteen pounds before the black bowler fell away, along with its diminutive owner, to the back of the room. "Thirteen pounds I'm bid, thirteen." My hand shot up of it's own violation and the price rose by increments to £15. That was make or break time. I wanted the car but I had now reached the limited of my resources. I plunged in recklessly my forefinger moving of it's own will, ‘fifteen pounds, ten shillings.’ The pugilist lifted his paper in reply but I detected or thought I detected a slight moment of hesitation on his part. I responded quickly, ‘sixteen I said. Then pausing slightly as if for effect I added, guineas’. My interjection turned heads, since speaking was de trop in this select society. I had breached rules of etiquette of which I had been blissfully ignorant. Suddenly I was conscious of a great tension in my chest and I swear I could hear my own heart beating faster and faster. The auctioneer took it in his stride and announced my bid with aplomb. "Sixteen guineas from the young gentleman on the left, do I hear another bid." I strained to see a hand movement from the grey suited figure but nothing changed in his demeanour. His expression had not altered once since he arrived. The auctioneer brought my cascading heart back to earth.

"Sixteen guineas, going, once, twice, sold to the gentleman in the blue coat." For a split second I did not know it was me he was referring to. Derek nudged me toward the auctioneer's box where I became conscious of a group of men counting out cash from leather wallets. I realised that lot 30 had been the last and that the auction was now over. All that remained was to settle up. This always took place in cash. For some reason, the forces of law and order were unwilling to take cheques, even ones drawn on so prestigious a bank as my own. Derek, who had bought two cars himself for the princely sum of twenty-six pounds, joined the end of the queue and I stood next to him.

The process of disposing of the bought vehicles took longer than I anticipated and it was nearly midday by the time our turn to pay arrived. Derek pulled out a wad of five-pound notes, and peeled the well-worn sheets of paper from their larger brothers with a practised hand. The money disappeared into a big leather case and Derek signed for the vehicle's logbooks.

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