Hope Road by John Barlow Read Free Book Online Page A

asking for trouble. The whole station knows, Baron better than anyone.
    “You enjoy the awards thing last night? Posh frocks, cocktails?”
    “Yeah, it was a laugh actually.”
    “Listen, Den. Keeping a change of clothes at John Ray’s place is one thing. Having your hands all over him in a room full of secondhand car dealers and journalists is another.”
    “Is that the way your journo friend put it?” Den says. “Bit sensational, don’t you think?”
    Baron’s head snaps towards her.
    “The girl from the
Yorkshire Post
, I assume,” she says, playing innocent. “I saw her there last night.”
    His phone goes off. She recognises the ringtone immediately:
Derrrr-DA… Derrrr-DA…
the cello music from
Jaws
.
    “My sons downloaded it for me,” he says as he tries to locate the phone in the various pockets of his suit.
    He was supposed to be taking the boys out today. His weekend with them. When he rang to cancel, still looking down at the dead body of a young woman in the boot of the car, the twins had already finished breakfast and were ready to go.
    “Baron. Yes, I’m out the front… Okay… Right. Yes. Thanks.”
    He digests the news for a second. John Ray was telling the truth: the trip to Peterborough yesterday, and his whereabouts on Monday morning, right down to the taxi. It all checks out. They’re even checking CCTV on Kirkstall Road to see whether he really did buy the Mondeo there.
    “Okay, let’s find Freddy!” he says as he spins around and heads for the doors.
    Den follows him inside. And as she looks at herself in the glass of the door, a very confused witness looks back.

Eight
    W hen he gets back to the showroom it smells even better than before.
    “I thought I’d carry on as normal,” Connie says, coming from the tiny kitchen at the back with a fat potato omelette an inch thick and far wider than the plate it’s sitting on.
    One look at it and he’s thinking longingly of Spain.
    “You want?” she asks.
    “Not just now, thanks.”
    “Sure?”
    She sets it down next to the
Gaggia
and serves herself a slice.
    “I think we might be beginning to attract people for your food rather than the cars.” He glances around at the empty showroom. “Not this morning, though.”
    “The police,” she says, waving an empty fork out in front of her, words partly muffled by soft potato, “probably frightened people away.”
    “Been back already, have they?”
    “They parked right outside. Two cars. One of ’em with, you know, the lights on top.”
    He nods, then notices how incredibly quiet the place is. There’s no music playing. But it’s not just that. It’s Freddy. Without him the showroom is dull and soulless. This is Freddy’s sales floor, his domain. He sets it up, and when a customer walks through the door he knows exactly where to steer them. The perfect salesman.
    Without Freddy,
Tony Ray’s Motors
is nothing. He’d stood with John and watched as the great sheets of curved glass were lifted into position, and they’d popped Champagne together when they opened for business, wondering who on earth was gonna venture down Hope Road for a secondhand beemer. About eighty percent of sales are Freddy’s, and John often jokes that by rights the business should be his. The truth is it was never a joke. If everything goes to plan, in five years’ time the place will be signed over to Freddy. He doesn’t know it yet. And he might never need to, because things have just started
not
going to plan…
    “Two cars?” he says. “They must have thought Freddy might be here.”
    “Yeah, well he isn’t,” she says. “He called me, though.”
    “He
called
?”
    “This morning, soon as I got in. ‘Tell John I’m sorry.’ That’s all he said.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
    “Would it have helped?” She holds open her hands, the gesture almost protective, like a parent indulging a teenager. “My Uncle Henrique, y’know, he always says,
piensa luego habla
,