Masters of the House (21 page)

He came in rubbing his hands, in as good a humour as Matthew had ever seen.

“You've just to go along. Bradford Road Garage. He's got four or five things he thinks might suit you. I've a mind to come along myself. . . .”

“Oh, that's all right, Dad. We'll only do a preliminary inspection. There's no point in actually buying a car before June, is there? That's when you'll be needed.”

The next day, walking home from school, was the first opportunity the boys had to talk the matter over.

“Your father's not very bright, is he?” Matthew said. “He couldn't hide the fact he knew who Kevin Holmes was.”

“I've told you that. He's thick as pig shit. If it wasn't for my mother he'd be a right mess.”

“Do you believe him when he says he's no more idea where Carmen is than anyone else?”

Peter frowned.

“I think so. I don't think he could have hidden it this long if he really knew. Like I say, he's thick.”

“Does he always ask who he's speaking to when he telephones?”

“What?” asked Peter, turning, with a puzzled look on his face.

“When the phone was answered he asked who he was speaking to. It's a bit unusual. Does he always do it?”

“Yes . . . yes, he does, if it's not a friend or something.”

“Has he always done it?”

“No. . . . But he has for some time now. Why?”

“It just didn't seem in character. It's the sort of thing a cautious person would do, and your dad's not cautious. It's as if he's had a bad experience that's made him cautious.”

It was a clever comment, a bright piece of observation. But Matthew was not to find out for many years what it was that had made Jim Leary cautious on the telephone.

T
HEY CAUGHT THE BUS
to Bradford Road, Stanningley, about a week later. They had talked over how best to get Kevin Holmes to talk and had agreed that Peter was the one to do it since he was on the verge of man's estate and about to enter, should he so wish, the world of beer drinking and page three girl fancying that his father and presumably Kevin Holmes inhabited. Matthew would drift around within earshot but outside the conversation. Matthew insisted that he had to be within earshot. Knowing so much more than Peter Leary did, it was necessary for him to hear everything in case the significance of something passed Peter by.

Matthew remembered roughly where the garage was, from his visit two or three years before with his father, when the family car had been (badly) serviced. It was in fact just off the Bradford Road, in a poor position, and it was little more than a ramshackle couple of sheds with petrol pumps in front of them
and a big yard littered with cars in for repairs and cars waiting to be sold. The look of the cars in both categories was far from prestigious, even from a distance.

Just outside the main shed door, a man in oily sweatshirt and dungaree trousers was bending over the exposed innards of one of them, exploring the mysteries of the combustion engine. All they could see of the man himself was a strip of flabby back merging into buttocks. Then he straightened up, and they could see that he was a beefy man of middle height, running to seed and very dirty, with a pudgy face dominated by small, greedy eyes. If he had been photographed standing there with his garage and wares around him, he might have typified the sort of businessman destined to go under in the first Thatcher recession. He emitted the shimmer of failure. Matthew found he had very little memory of him from his earlier visit, but then he did not seem to be a memorable man.

“Carmen didn't go for class in her boyfriends,” commented Matthew. “Or money either.”

“No, she didn't. What do you mean—that it's difficult to imagine how she finally netted a rich one?”

Matthew didn't quite mean that. In his mind he was wondering how anyone could believe she'd attracted a rich admirer after the series of no-hopers she had been involved with. But he just nodded, and as Kevin Holmes bent back over the car another thought occurred to him: if they were all, to a greater or lesser degree, no-hopers, were they chosen for something
else
Carmen was after, something for which she was willing to offer herself and her favours in return? Carmen was hard, blatant, voracious; but it was as difficult to see her
choosing
someone as dingy and unappetising as Kevin Holmes as it was to see her managing to attract a genuinely rich man. If it was just sex she was after, couldn't she have pulled in much better specimens
than the four men she had flaunted in her last year? And if it wasn't sex, what was it?

Peter looked at Matthew, who nodded. Then Peter led the way across the road.

“Mr Holmes? Kevin Holmes?”

“Kev,” said the man, straightening up.

“Pete Leary,” said Peter.

“Matt,” said Matthew.

So there they were, all matey together. It was obvious that Holmes did not remember Matthew from his visit with his father. In any case, he largely ignored him as not being at present in the car-buying class.

“I won't shake hands,” said Holmes, making a token dab at his hands with an oily rag which had been tucked into his trousers. “No way you can do this job without getting dirty—not if you're going to do it properly. Wouldn't think I used to be a white-collar worker, would you? Now what sort of car had you in mind?”

“Well, just something that goes, really,” said Peter. “And will keep going till I take my test.”

“Oh, you can be sure of that with anything you buy from me,” said Kevin Holmes expansively. “I wouldn't do you down. And your dad and I are mates in a sort of way, so I'd make sure his son got a good deal.”

As he led the way over to one of the grisly collection of clapped-out vehicles at the far end of the yard Matthew separated off from them and drifted over to two motorcycles a few feet away, pretending to examine them closely.

“Now this really is a lovely little bus,” said Holmes, banging his palm on the hand-painted bonnet and producing a cracked, tinny sound. “L-reg, only one owner—a very careful lady indeed—and low mileage for its age.”

“Let's have a look under the bonnet,” said Peter, as if he would understand what he saw.

“Right you are,” said Homes, lifting it up. It gave an arthritic creak. “You're a lad who knows what he's about, I can see that. . . . There now, lovely engine—I've been over it myself, practically renewed it. You'll get a nice turn of speed out of this car if that's what you fancy.”

“The interior doesn't look too good,” said Peter, peering through the windows on the driver's side and viewing shabby and torn upholstery that wouldn't have reflected creditably on the one careful lady owner if she had ever existed.

“I wouldn't have thought a lad like you would have been bothered about the upholstery,” said Holmes, unfazed, as if giving a lesson in the truly manly view of such things. “I can let you have a nice pair of seat covers if you are. But the real selling point of this one is the engine. You'll find she's a really fine little motor for her age, with plenty of acceleration. Like I said, I wouldn't do you down because your dad and me's got a sort of bond between us.”

“Carmen O'Keefe, you mean,” said Peter, with a man-of-the-world smile. There was a moment's silence, then Holmes slapped him on the back and laughed.

“Well, I'll be blowed! Know about your dad's little fling, do you?”

Peter responded with an experienced-roué smile.

“I should do. They talked about it enough at church. And about you and her, too.”

Holmes screwed up his piggy face.

“Oh Gawd—these women with religion! What a lot of cats they can be. Just because a man has a bit of fun . . .”

“Dad was married, of course. Were you?”

“Well, let's say I was and I wasn't. I was when I took up with Carmen, and I wasn't by the time I finished with her. Pity, that. A man needs a woman to go home to—someone to cook and do his darning for him. Trouble is, they want to own him exclusively. That's never been my line, and I don't suppose it's your dad's either. Well now, what do you say to this little job? I could let you have it for five hundred pounds.”

“Five hundred's a lot of stamps to unload. Could we look at something a bit cheaper?'

“Right you are.” Kevin Holmes heaved his dirty body off the bonnet and went over to another car that looked as if ten more miles would put paid to its travelling life forever.

“What's this one?”

“A Hillman Minx. Very good car in its time—family model, much loved. Now, I wouldn't say this was in the same class as the other, but it'll get you on the road and keep you there as long as you're a learner driver. I know because I've really worked my fingers to the bone on this little job. . . .”

Peter let Kevin Holmes go through his unconvincing spiel for two or three more cars. Then he said, “Well, I won't have any difficulty when the time comes. I promised my dad he could come along and help me make the final choice.” He leered. “You two'll have a lot in common.”

“Very funny,” said Holmes, unoffended. “You're obviously quite a wit, young man.”

“Oh, I just meant generally. Because in a way you're the same type of chap—ordinary blokes. Not meaning to be insulting, naturally. But there is one thing I can't understand. . . .”

“What's that?”

“Well, from what I hear, Carmen O'Keefe's boyfriends were mostly ordinary blokes like you and my dad. But if you believe
the gossip at St Joseph's, suddenly she's swanned off with a rich admirer. I just wonder how she's suddenly managed to get her hooks into a moneybags.”

Kevin Holmes shook his head dubiously.

“
If
she did,” he said.

“You don't think so?”

“For a starter, you don't want to believe all the gossip you hear at church. Has anybody seen her with this admirer? Does anybody know his name? I tell you, when I heard she'd gone, my first thought was she was keeping out of the way of the police.”

Peter was genuinely surprised.

“The police? I never heard she was in any trouble with the police.”

Kevin Holmes began shuffling. It was obvious that he realised he'd said too much, perhaps made incautious by Peter's youth.

“Oh, it was just a thought.”

“But you must have had some idea what she might be in trouble with the police about.”

“Oh, she was always into something a bit dodgy, was Carmen.”

“What sort of dodgy things?”

Kevin Holmes drew himself up to his full height.

“Now, just you give me a rest from these questions, young Leary. Anyone would think I was being grilled in a police station. I don't think being interested in your dad's old girlfriend is healthy myself. Are you here to buy a car or are you not?”

At that point Matthew concluded reluctantly that things were not going to progress much further on that particular line of enquiry. He strolled over to the pair.

“That's a marvellous lot of old motorbikes you've got there. I'm going to have one when I'm older.”

“Well, you come along to me when you are. I can see a whole line of customers from the Leary family.”

They didn't disabuse him of the notion that Matthew was a Leary. If he had asked his surname, it would have made the connection to Carmen all too obvious.

“Did you work with cars when you had a white-collar job?” asked Matthew innocently.

“No—or only part of the time. I was an insurance assessor. It was a good job, but not for me. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I prefer this.”

Matthew's eyes went round the yard, an expression of interest and enthusiasm on his face. But he found it impossible to believe Kevin Holmes. In fact, he felt sure he had not left his job voluntarily. Had he just been made redundant, or had he, perhaps, been caught out in something crooked? The man's manner suggested that it was the latter. He did not inspire trust.

“Well now, if you two are not going to hand over the money and drive something off . . .”

“There's no way I could drive something off,” said Peter. “Dad told you I wasn't seventeen yet. But we'll be back with my dad closer to my birthday. I expect these cars will be gone by then. . . .”

“Not necessarily,” said Kevin Holmes quickly. “You can never tell with used cars. And this new government seems to be driving the economy into the ground even quicker than the last lot did.”

“Anyway, you'll have something for me.”

“I will, I'm sure of that. Now, back to work.”

And he bent over the same old car—eternally tinkering, never putting to rights. Nobody else had come into the garage while they'd been talking, even for petrol. Both boys could recognise a business that was not going anywhere.

“Can we walk?” asked Matthew when they were out of earshot. Peter grimaced.

“Walk home? It's a hell of a long way.”

“Well, start off walking. I want to get my thoughts in order.”

“Could you hear everything?”

“Pretty much.”

“It was interesting what he said about the police being interested in Carmen.”

Matthew nodded vigorously.

“Very interesting. Pity he clammed up.”

“Do you think there's anything in it?”

“Maybe. The question is what she'd done that interested them.”

“But do you think that's why she took off?”

“She didn't take off. She was murdered.”

It was a decision taken suddenly but led up to by weeks of uncertainty. He had to have someone who shared his secret. Annie was no longer interested, having remade her safe nest. Peter was his friend—sensible, sympathetic, older and already involved. Sharing the secret with him was a sort of friendship oath.