Locked Rooms (33 page)

The boy glanced at me curiously, but could see no reason to fend me off. “My uncle’s around the back, working on a transmission.”

The mechanic looked as if he was doing battle with the transmission, or being eaten by it. The dismantled vehicle lay strewn all about, the body lifted to one side, the engine hanging from a gargantuan tripod, and the underpinnings—drive-shaft crossed by two axles—lay atop a pair of outstretched legs. I stopped short, wondering if I should summon help to lift the weighty object off a dead man, but then the legs convulsed and, marginally more reassuringly, a string of dire imprecations emerged from the wreckage. Someone that eloquent, I thought, could not be
in extremis.

“Er, I beg your pardon?” I said loudly.

The imprecations paused, the convulsing legs began to push against the paving stones, and one arm wrapped around the drive-shaft, pulling its owner into open air.

A grease-blackened face glared at me. “Yeah?”

“I’m very sorry to interrupt you, but I’m looking for the gentleman who owned this establishment back in 1914.”

More of the torso emerged, and a rag was waved across the visage, making no discernible difference, although beneath the film he appeared not much older than I. “That would’ve been my brother, Dick,” he said. “I helped out, and took it over after he was killed back in ’20.”

“Would you have been here in September 1914?”

He cocked his head and fixed me with a long, thoughtful gaze before deciding to get to his feet. The rest of him was no less greasy, and I had to stop myself from retreating fastidiously when he climbed over his project and came over to stand in front of me. He tugged a cap from the back pocket of his overalls and pulled it on. Thus equipped for a formal interview, he squinted at me. “Why do you want to know about September 1914?”

It was my turn to look thoughtfully at him. Was it the date itself, or my asking, that had caught his attention? When in doubt, fall back on the truth, or a close facsimile.

“I was in a motor accident then, just down the road from this place. I wondered if anyone might remember any details about the day.”

The black, shiny surface before me shifted as his expression changed. “You were in that car?”

That car.
“I was.”

“You’re the girl.”

“I was, yes.”

“Well, I’ll be da—Sorry, miss.”

“So you do remember it?”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry to tell you you’re too late. I already gave it to him.”

“Gave what to whom?” It was an effort to speak over the sudden pounding of my heart, but I didn’t know if it was excitement or apprehension.

“The insurance man.”

“Insurance—you mean the tall man with the hair going white?”

“Bad cough.”

“That’s the one. What did he want?”

“Didn’t want much of anything at first, just asked questions about the accident. But when I told him what I’d done, what I had, he got more interested in it than in his questions.”

“What you’d—” I drew a breath, let it out slowly, and began over again. “Mister—what is your name?”

“Hoffman,” he replied, automatically sticking out his filthy paw. Without hesitation I took it, and took also the grubby rag he handed me afterwards.

“Mary Russell,” I told him. “Might we sit for a moment?”

“Sure, over here.”

I did not look too closely at the condition of the bench he offered—they were, after all, merely clothes. “Mr Hoffman, could you tell me about the insurance man and what you gave him?”

“Fellow came by late Saturday afternoon, asking about that accident just like you did. At first I didn’t have the faintest what he was talking about—it’d been ten years, after all—but then after I’d shook my head about a dozen times it was like it shook something loose in my skull and a little bell started to ring. Anyway, I was in the middle of saying No, I don’t know anything, when it hit me, sort of like, ‘Oh,
that
accident!’ So I said, Now wait a minute, that was the car whose tyre I changed, and started rummaging around in the back where I keep all the odds and ends I might need one day. Only took me a little while, and there it was. Little dusty, of course, but clear as day.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, right, you haven’t seen it. It was part of the braking system of a 1914 Maxwell, almost as clean as when it came off the factory floor, except it had a slice halfway across it that sure as shooting wasn’t put there by the factory, and it had broke the rest of the way.”

My face must have told him that, though I was a female, I understood not only what a brake rod was, but what a cut one meant. He nodded encouragingly, and told me a long and apologetic story about how his brother had seen that perfectly good chassis sitting there getting beaten by waves and decided that it might as well be salvaged for parts before the ocean took it. As they’d been dismantling it some months later, the remaining half of the brake rod came to light. His brother had found it, showed him what it had meant, and stuck it on the shelf.

“Why didn’t you give it to the police?” I asked.

“We did,” he answered indignantly. “Next time the town cop come by, a day or two later, my brother and me showed it to him, told him where we’d got it. He was more interested in the fact that we’d helped ourselves to the car—as if there was anything left of it, it was less of a car than a heap of scrap. By the time he left, he was saying he’d have to ask his sergeant about charging Dick and me with theft. Had us a little worried, I won’t lie. But nothing happened after that. And when nothing happened, I sure wasn’t about to stick my neck out a second time and risk getting me and my brother arrested over something that had maybe or maybe not happened four months before. So we just left it on the shelf for safekeeping and shut up about it, and after a while I just plumb forgot.”

“Until the insurance man came asking.” Asking about that accident, not one of the previous December.

Hoffman nodded. “He sawed off the end and took it away with him. The end I had, anyway.”

“It was only half?”

“About eight inches of rod cut about three-quarters of the way through. The rest of the way it’d tore, like I told you. Our local Deadeye Dick said it was a piece of junk, that it broke in the wreck. But I know cars, and I know brake rods, and even when I was a kid I could see that it wasn’t just a break that happened in going off the cliff. My brother was right—someone sawed nearly through it. Couldn’t be no accident or flaw in the steel, and sure as hell—pardon, miss—wasn’t from no scraping rock.”

“I believe you,” I told him. He settled back on the bench, his ten-year-old indignation soothed by my agreement. I continued. “Did you notice anything about the insurance man? I don’t suppose he gave you his card?”

“Come to think of it, he did—should be near the register somewheres, that’s where he found me.”

“Had you seen the—” I caught myself before I could reveal that I knew that the man had come in a hired bread van. “—the car he came in?”

“Wasn’t a car, a white bakery delivery van, out of the city. Never seen it before.”

We talked a while longer, but he knew nothing else about the purported insurance man. I was about to thank him for his time and rejoin my companions when I realised that I’d been so distracted by his unexpected information about the insurance man and the brake line, I’d nearly forgotten the question that started it all.

“About the accident, ten years ago. Apart from the brake rod you found later, was there anything about the day itself that stuck in your mind?”

“Long time ago,” he said.

“Yes, I understand. Well, thank you—” I started to say, but he was not finished.

“. . . and you know how it’s hard to be sure about details, when things happened, unless you pin them down at the time?”

“Yes?” I said by way of encouragement, settling down again on the hard seat.

“Well, after we found the brake rod—and remember, that was months later—end of December, first part of January—I got to thinking back. Like I said, I’d been the one patched the car’s tyre, and when I heard a little later that it’d gone off the cliff just down the road, all I could think of was I hadn’t fastened the wheel down strong enough and it fell off and I’d killed them. Can’t tell you what a relief it was to see all four wheels still on the car—the rubber melted, of course, but there. So the day itself made what you might call an impression on me, you understand?”

I nodded encouragement.

“It’s like there’s a light on the day, and yeah, I forgot about it there for a while, but once I thought about it again, I could see a lot of details. Like those wheels, and where Dick stuck that hunk of rod, and that it was the afternoon a girl I was sweet on come by and brought me a cake she’d made, that kind of thing, you know?”

I nodded again, wondering where this tale was leading us.

“So, one of the things I remembered later, I’m pretty sure it was that same day, but if you told me it wasn’t, I couldn’t call you a liar, you know what I’m saying? But I think it was the same afternoon that the man with the scars was there.”

It was a good thing I was already seated; the
thump
of reaction would have put me on the ground. “Scars,” I repeated breathlessly.

“Yeah, burn scars, all over his face. Not real heavy, you know, and his eyes and nose were okay. Just that the skin was funny-looking, all shiny.”

“And his eyebrows were gone.”

“Not completely, but they were kind of patchy, like his moustache. Even the front of the scalp was uneven, like. And they weren’t pink, so they probably weren’t new. I was sixteen then and the war had just started up so it was in all the papers, and when I saw him I wondered at first if he’d got them in the war, then realised it was probably just some kind of accident.”

“What did he want?”

“Nothing, as far as I could see. I’d just finished putting the wheel on and noticed him standing about, and he was still there when I’d moved the car and helped another customer. So I mentioned it to my brother, thinking maybe the guy was looking to steal something. Dick laughed at me, said I’d been reading too many cheap stories, look at the guy, did he look like someone who needed to steal things? He went over and talked to him, turned out he was just waiting for a ride he’d set up. And his ride must’ve come, because he wasn’t there next time I came out.”

“But you remembered the fellow, later.”

“When that cut rod got me thinking, yeah. But like I said, I can’t be a hundred percent sure it was even the same day, just around then. And the guy didn’t look like someone who’d crawl under a car with a hacksaw.”

“Dressed well?”

“Yeah, like a dandy.”

A dandy. “Did . . . by any chance, was he wearing a diamond ring?” This was feeding information to a witness, but it couldn’t be helped, and imagination or no, I didn’t think the mechanic was terribly suggestible.

The grimy face looked startled, then the eyebrows came down in thought. “He was, now I come to think about it. How’d you know?”

“A friend mentioned him,” I told him, more or less truthfully: The scars explained why Mr Gordimer’s grey-haired intruder with a diamond ring had kept his back turned, only revealing his face when he spoke over his shoulder, showing a scrap of moustache. “You haven’t seen him since?”

“That I haven’t, and I think I’d have noticed.”

“I imagine you would,” I said. “Can we just check the insurance man’s business card?”

He led me inside the tiny building, rooting around in his cash-drawer for a minute before coming up with a slip of white pasteboard identical to the one the man had given me on Sunday. I handed this one back to the garage owner, thanked him, and gave him a card of my own with the telephone number of the St Francis on it, in case anything else should occur to him. Before I left, I asked, “The boy outside, is he your brother’s son?”

“He is. Four years old when his daddy joined up. I’m raising him as my own.”

I went back into my hand-bag and laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “I’m sure there’s something the boy needs. This is a thank-you from an English citizen, to one who made the great sacrifice.”

He took the money, shook my hand again, and watched me walk away.

Around the side of the garage, I found a water tap and a bar of filthy soap stuck onto a nail, and absently scrubbed at my palms, my mind caught up in the sensation of pressure, of memories unseen, and the inner echo of that morning’s voice murmuring:
They died.

Clearly, the Southern woman and her scarred companion had hired another agent. Still, I’d have expected their “insurance man” to be more than a few days ahead of us. Gordimer had thrown the pair off the lake property five weeks ago—why hadn’t they come to the Serra Beach garage at that time? If they were looking to retrieve any evidence of their murderous sabotage of my father’s motorcar, why wait until I was breathing down their necks?

I joined Flo and Donny at the car, but before I got in, I turned to study the garage and its adjoining café.

Something was missing here; either that, or I was missing something. Trim building, petrol pumps, big gum tree growing around one side, a general air of prosperity; the air smelt of eucalyptus oil, the sea, petrol, and frying meat from the café; the sounds were the chugging of the pump, the cries of sea-birds, voices in conversation, a dog somewhere barking in play; I couldn’t put my finger on what should have been there but was not.

“Do you see something missing?” I asked my companions. When they did not answer, I glanced around and saw their expressions, which were frankly concerned. Belatedly, I realised that my peremptory commands of the morning, given without explanation, had left them wondering as to my stability.

“It’s okay,” I said with a rather forced laugh. “I know I’ve been a bit lunatic this morning, but really, I simply remembered that there was something I needed to do in the city, and hadn’t made other arrangements. Sorry I’ve been so pushy. And here, well, I’m trying to remember what it is.”

Both of them dutifully turned to study the front of the garage. Donny cleared his throat and suggested, “These kinds of places sometimes have signs standing out in the road,” but that did not feel right. With a sigh of resignation I climbed into my assigned seat.