Hope Road by John Barlow Read Free Book Online Page B

‘think then talk’. So that’s what I did. Think. And now I talk.”
    “Perhaps in future just talk, right?”
    “He sounded in trouble,” she says, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her tight black jeans. “Anyway, he rings me, yeah? My phone. But if you want I tell everything to everyone, you, police, everybody. About Freddy… the Mondeo…”
    “That’s all he said?” he asks, ignoring her petulance. “That he was sorry?”
    “Yes. Nothing else. He hung up.”
    John flops down to the floor, his back against a car, legs out in front of him on the polished concrete floor.
    “It’s the girl, isn’t it?” she says. “The one on the news. The police wouldn’t tell me why they were here, but it was on the radio when they arrived…”
    “Shit, it’s only just turned eleven. It’s on the news already?”
    “
Sí
. A young woman, it said. Found dead in a car.”
    “It was the Mondeo. She was in the boot,” he says, hanging his head and rubbing his face in both hands. “What did the police say?”
    “They asked me where I was last night.”
    “What did you tell ’em?”
    “Movie and then a pizza at a friend’s flat, then sex til late.”
    “You told ’em that?”
    “Why not? It’s the truth. And the neighbours downstairs bang on the ceiling every time we put on music. You know the type…”
    The type who like to sleep at night, yeah, I know.
    He has to smile. He and Connie have got the same alibi for last night. Only Connie has witnesses, and they’re armed with broom handles.
    “I had to give them my friend’s number, as well,” she adds. “One of ’em went outside and phoned him straightaway.” She holds up her cell phone. “He told ’em the same.”
    She pockets the phone and eats more omelette.
    “Think, then talk!” John says. “What did your uncle Henrique do, anyway?”
    “Same as your dad.”
    “Henrique? Didn’t he make ceramic tiles or something?”
    She exhales theatrically. “And your dad, he sold cars, right?”
    If there’s a twinkle in her eyes, it’s dampened by their dark, slightly puffy appearance. The eyes, never mind the neighbours, confirm what she was doing last night.
    He remains there on the floor, watching her eat. His thoughts turn again to Spain, then to his dad. It had been a fine, warm afternoon, and they were in the carefully manicured gardens of the nursing home, amid some of the region’s most pampered geriatrics.
There’s a girl from Spain
, Dad said. The daughter of someone they knew back in the old country,
just a
chiquilla
, a young thing
…
    It was the only time he’d ever asked anything of John.
Do this for me
, he said with an easy smile, the Tony Ray smile, the one that had always got him whatever he wanted.
Let this slip of a girl work in the new showroom. A favour to her family back home
…
    For a long time no girl showed up. John forgot all about it. Then she arrived, all hair and winking buttocks. And the truth was that although he couldn’t say exactly how or why, Connie was a godsend.
***
    They make coffee and take it outside. The early autumn sun has crept down onto Hope Road and the wind has dropped. Nestled in the inward curve of the showroom’s glass frontage, it could almost be mid-morning on the continent.
    “So,” he says, lighting a cigarette and savouring the tobacco rush as he inhales, trying to ignore the heady mix of self-loathing and guilty pleasure of the failed ex-smoker, “what did the police ask you about the car?”
    “They say they wanna see where it was. I show them, out back. They look at the gate. No damage, still locked. We come inside, and they ask if it’s in the computer.”
    “The Mondeo?”
    “I say yes, I suppose. We look, and it isn’t. I say it’s only been here a few days. I haven’t got around to it, y’know.” She glances at him and takes a quick drag on her cigarette. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. Anything else?”
    “They took the security video for