Coffin Dodgers (7 page)

I don't think I'm supposed to laugh at that, or even smirk. So I don't do either.
 

"The same night, Scott Marsden -- who we both know isn't exactly renowned for his crazy risk-taking behaviour -- suddenly decides he's a racing driver. And Comedy Jim does the same a few days before. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"

I'd forgotten about Comedy Jim. Shit. She's right.

"You think it's deliberate? Someone's tampered with my car?"

"Yes. You were at the same garage at the same time as Scott Marsden. Both of you crashed on the same night. That's one hell of a coincidence."

"But why would somebody in a garage want to kill me? Why would anybody want to kill me, full stop?"

"That's why you need to go to the police. They'll find out."

Amy made it clear that whatever I had planned for the morning, I was going to the police station first. She can be very persuasive -- that, and she turned up this morning in the Dentmobile to pick me up.
 

The Dentmobile is our name for the collection of dents, scrapes, rust and flaking paint that Amy calls a car, the long-suffering victim of Amy's gung-ho approach to parking, her inability to judge gaps and her complete lack of fear behind the wheel. Dave and I think that one day it'll break in two like a clown car, with Amy going in one direction and her passengers in the other.
 

Today, though, the Dentmobile stays in one piece. Amy drops me at the front door and drives off to park, so I go to the front desk and ask to see Burke. The duty sergeant points up the stairs. "First floor, second on the right," he says.

Burke's office doesn't look as if it's had much in the way of tender loving care of late, if ever. The door frames are yellow with age, the windows are filthy, the plaster on the ceiling is cracked, there's what looks like damp on the walls and the desk is scratched and stained.
 

You know how some people end up looking like their pets? Burke looks like his office.
 

"Why would anybody want to kill you?" Burke asks. His chair groans in protest as he leans back and steeples his fingers.
 

"I don't know."

"Did you have any connection to Scott Marsden or James Colvin?"

I didn't know that was Comedy Jim's last name. "Not that I can think of. We went to school together."

Burke sighs. "Maybe that's it," he says. "An angry ex-teacher is wreaking terrible revenge, perhaps. Or a former pupil, driven crazy by your success, is going to make you pay. Or maybe you borrowed a lot of books, never took them back, and the school librarian is angry. Happens all the time."

I get the distinct impression that Burke isn't entirely sympathetic.

"Mr Burke --"

"Detective."

"Sorry. Detective Burke. I don't know what's going on. All I know is that two people are dead, and I was nearly number three. Don't you think it's possible that what happened to me might have happened to the other guys, too? I don't know about James Colvin, but Scott Marsden was getting his car fixed in the same place at the same time as me -- and we both had crashes afterwards. Doesn't that strike you as suspicious?"

Burke does a slow blink and then speaks very slowly. "I have been a policeman for a very long time," he says. "And while I don’t normally investigate car accidents – aren’t you the lucky one? -- I've seen a few. And do you know what I’ve learnt?"

"No, sir."

"I’ve learnt that when young men lose control of their cars, it’s rarely because they were speeding, or showing off, or fiddling with the radio, or thinking about girls," he says.
 

He pauses. "No. More often than not, it’s because of a murder conspiracy."

It takes me a moment to realise that he’s being sarcastic.

"I wasn’t speeding."

"I know," Burke says. "You said that."

I try not to get exasperated. "I wasn’t. Look, there must be some way you can check the car. The black box, maybe. That'll tell you if somebody's been messing with the car."

The black box is a little in-car computer that records everything you do, from the speed you’re doing to the way you drive. It’s possible to buy a car that doesn’t have one, but good luck getting it insured.
 

Burke is quiet for a moment and then stands up. "Okay," he says. "I'll look into it."

Amy is pacing around the reception area and doesn't spot me until I've reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Well?"

"He'll look into it, he says."

"Think he will?"

"God knows."

"So what are you going to do now?"

"No plans."

"I need to get back to work. Want me to come round after?"

"That'd be good."

"Okay, then. Need a lift?"

"No thanks," I say. "I could do with some fresh air."

"Suit yourself." But she says it with a smile.

I walk Amy to the Dentmobile and wave as she drives off. I don't need fresh air at all, but I don't want to tell her that her driving on the way over scared the crap out of me. Amy's a fast driver and it doesn't usually bother me, but after the crash I'm a bit more sensitive -- okay, scared -- than usual. If somebody's trying to kill me then wandering around in broad daylight is probably a bit risky, but the way I feel right now, another car ride with Amy behind the wheel would kill me for sure.

I take the long way back, wandering in and out of shops to kill a few hours, then go home, grab something to eat and play video games until Dave and Amy turn up. The more beer we have, the more convoluted the conspiracy theories we come up with. And then Dave does something that doesn't happen very often. He says something that makes total sense.

"You know, this whole thing could be a great big cock-up," he says.

Amy looks at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well, we're sitting here trying to think of reasons why somebody might want Matt dead, and we can't think of any. What if there isn't a somebody? What if the whole thing's a cock-up?"

"I don't follow you," I say.

"You and Scott both took your cars to Otto at the same time. Chances are Comedy Jim gets his car done there too. Everyone knows Otto's the cheapest place to go."

I nod.

"So maybe that's what you've all got in common. Most of the stuff's done on computer now, isn't it? Maybe Otto's computer system's got something wrong with it. A virus, or a bug, or something like that."

"Dave, I think you might be onto something," Amy says.
 

We talk about it some more, and agree that when you've got a choice between conspiracy and cock-up, cock-up wins every time.
 

"You should tell Burke about this," Amy suggests.

"I will," I promise.
 

We talk about other things, with Dave going off on tangents as usual. He's mid-way through a particularly opinionated rant about nothing in particular when Amy starts rummaging in her bag. She grabs a thin tube of something and throws it to me. "I almost forgot," she says. "Go and see Sleazy Bob tomorrow, and make sure you use this."

"What is it? Pepper spray?"

"Not quite. Concealer. Use it on those scratches. They haven't completely gone yet."

"You want me to wear make-up?"

Amy seems amused. "Don't worry, Matt, it's not the beginning of a slippery slope. You're not going to end up wearing dresses to work." She puts her hand on my shoulder and adopts a stage whisper. "Unless, of course, you really want to," she smirks.

Dave laughs so hard that beer shoots out of his nose.

"Dave, there are times when I could happily shoot you," I say. He pretends to look hurt.

Amy's still smirking, but her voice is serious. "Use it, Matt," she says. "You're not working, so you're not earning. If you're not earning, you'll stop buying beer. If you stop buying beer, that means I'll have to buy beer. And that's messing with the very fabric of the universe -- which, as we all know, is a very dangerous thing to do." The smirk has become a grin. "So put some of that on your scratches before you go and see Sleazy Bob, avoid sweating and don't get into any water pistol fights. Unless he's looking at you from an inch away, he won't see the scratches, you'll go back to work and our beer supplies will be safe." Dave cheers. "You know I'm right."

I know better than to ignore Amy's advice. I see Sleazy Bob the following afternoon and I'm back behind the bar that very night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Having a near-death experience in a car does more than put your insurance premiums up. It makes you think about the big stuff: who you are, what you're doing with your life, that kind of thing. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes or anything dramatic like that, but the crash was a pretty vivid illustration of how life is more fragile than you'd like to think. As Amy put it, had the crash happened a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, I'd have ended up pancaked underneath a truck. If the car had been going a little bit faster, or if it had gone crazy on a different stretch of road where there were great big solid walls instead of hedges… you get the idea.

And of course, with Sleazy Bob sending me home from work I ended up stuck in the apartment with no transport and nothing to do but listen to the thoughts running around inside my head.
 

So I'm going to make some big changes. I haven't worked out the details yet, but I don't want to be tending a bar for the rest of my life -- and I don't want the rest of my life to be like this bit of my life. So I'm going to do something about the job situation, and I'm going to do something about the Amy situation.

I don't think I'm imagining things -- I mean, when she came to the hospital she'd obviously been crying, and she did give me a kiss. What I need to work out is whether it was a "poor thing" kiss, the sort of kiss you'd give a dog, or if it was something a bit more profound. Obviously I hope it's the latter, but it could be the former. If it is, and if I do something to try and become more than a friend, I'll probably end up with tramps finding bits of me in various dustbins around town.
 

So that's one of the details I need to work out. I admit, it's a pretty big detail.

"Do you think I could get a drink some time this week?"

I'm back to Earth with a bump. "What can I get you?"

"Double brandy with ice."

I get him the double brandy and do a double-take. It's Burke.
 

"I thought policeman didn't drink on duty?"

"I'm not on duty."

I think I might have underestimated his age the first time I met him. I'd guessed fiftysomething, but tonight he looks a lot older. Maybe it's the downlighters on the bar -- they look great in photos, but they're not exactly flattering in real life -- or maybe he's had a rough day. Or maybe I just got it wrong first time round.

Burke tastes the drink, puts it down on the bar, and pushes something towards me. It's his notebook. He swipes his finger across and hits a few digits.

"There's something I want you to see."

The page fills with graphs and impossibly small writing.

"What is it?"

"You asked me to look at the black boxes," he says. "This is the data from the one in your car."

Burke points to the graph that dominates the page.

"This shows your speed. As you can see, you were doing a steady forty, and then you started accelerating hard."

"That's right. That's when the car went nuts."

"Ah," Burke says. "That's why you need to take a look at this." He points to a box to the right of the graph. "This section is for fault codes. Problems. Malfunctions. Anything out of the ordinary."

"But that section's blank."

Burke smiles, but there's no warmth in his expression. "Exactly."

"I don't understand."

"Then let me explain. The black box records everything that happens. If the brakes fail, it records it. If the steering goes wrong, it records it. If you get a puncture, it records it. If a tyre blows, it records it." He swipes the notebook. "So if we look here, a few seconds before you crashed, there's a fault code for a tyre. Before that? Nothing."

If I were a cartoon character, there'd be a giant question mark over my head.

"That doesn't make sense," I say. "The car started accelerating. The brakes didn't work. Nothing worked. That's why I crashed."

"That's not what the black box says. Oh, it says you accelerated. But the car was working fine."

"Then the black box is wrong."

"They're never wrong."

"That one is," I say, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. "Maybe it's been infected with a virus, or something. Or maybe somebody's tampered with it."

Burke sighs. I've spent enough time with him to know that's not a good sign. "I was there when they downloaded it. Nobody tampered with anything."

"A virus, then. Something's got into the computers at Otto's."

Burke prods his notebook again. "Does this look familiar?"

"Of course it does. We've just been looking at it."

"This isn't from your car. It's from Scott Marsden's car. Here's another one." Another page appears, looking pretty much like the previous one. "James Colvin's car," Burke says. "In both cases the black boxes didn't record any faults -- but what they did record was two young men driving too fast, losing control and crashing. Do you know how many speed-related car crashes there have been in the last couple of weeks?

I don't. I shake my head.

"Three. You, Scott Marsden and James Colvin. If there was something wrong with the systems, if some gremlin was making cars go crazy, there would have been dozens of crashes, maybe hundreds. But there weren't. There were three. You, Marsden and Colvin."

I stare at him.

"I told you I'm off-duty, and I am," Burke says. "I'm here to do you a favour. You asked me to look into it, and I did. The answers I've got don't help you. But booking people means more paperwork, and I hate paperwork. So here's what I think."

He takes another sip of the brandy before continuing. "The way I see it, you did something stupid, something that could have had very serious consequences, but nobody got hurt -- apart from you. Your car's probably a write-off, you've been banged about and ended up in hospital, and you've had to take some unpaid days off. I reckon that's probably more than enough punishment for you to deal with. Who knows, maybe the experience will make you a better person. So I'm going to give you some good news, and I'm going to give you some bad news. Which would you like first?"