Post Mortem by Gary Bell (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

children gave chase with their bricks and knives. At the end of the road we bounced up over a grass verge and came down hard, and I looked into the rear-view mirror in time to see the first bicycle fall away in a shower of sparks, taking what looked like my exhaust pipe with it.

The boy with the jaguar was fast. He followed for two roads before giving up and waving us off with two fingers high in the air. I kept my eyes on him through the empty frame of the rear window until we turned the next corner and made it back onto Church Road.

The entire ordeal had lasted no more than a minute and a half.

Zara was still trying to control her panicky breathing, but my mind remained on the boy from the bonnet.

‘That little bastard’s trainers …’ I growled.

‘Wh-what about them?’

‘Did they look like Gucci to you, too?’

PART TWO

OLD FLAMES

12

I wasn’t just livid. I was devastated.

Shallow as it might have seemed, rusted though it certainly was, that car had been the driving force behind my aspirations ever since I’d been homeless, when I’d first come across an identical, brand-new model owned by a barrister back in 1987. To me, it was more than a vehicle. It was a turning point in my youth, a physical reward in my thirties, a trusted companion in later life and the only thing I’d kept from the divorce.

Now it was ruined.

The furious hooligan of my past wanted revenge; it seemed obvious to me that Deacon had lured us into a trap and then called for backup. The seasoned barrister of my present insisted that Deacon might not have been to blame.

Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong decision to follow him at all.

I was out of my flat half an hour before sunrise on Wednesday morning, sometime around six, hoping to get the car moved before the roads started to fill. Already there were a couple of early starters dressed in suits hovering on the pavement beside the Jag, muttering between themselves. I couldn’t blame them. Despite dumping it as far away from the nearest street light as I could manage, it didn’t look any better than when I’d left it there last night.

The rear window was shattered over the back seats. Deep white cracks rippled across the windows and quarter glass of both rear doors. The driver’s door was dented, the passenger side scratched. A headlight was broken. There were no wing mirrors to speak of and only a hole from where the jaguar itself had once leapt.

‘Morning,’ I said politely, stepping between the onlookers to unlock the door.

‘M-morning?’ one of them said.

‘Supposed to be another warm one today,’ I noted, climbing in behind the wheel.

The man cleared his throat. ‘That’s … That’s great.’

I nodded. ‘Well, have a good one,’ I said and shut the door.

The car started, which was a blessing, though without an exhaust it sounded like heavy artillery fire and the bystanders recoiled a couple of feet. The chassis shook so furiously that one of the cracked panes collapsed inwards from the door directly behind me. I flared the one headlight as if I hadn’t noticed, waved a casual farewell, then chuntered slowly up the road.

I’d been searching online for a reliable mechanic when the idea had come to me. It wasn’t the most sensible thing to do, driving east across the centre of the city, but it seemed to have at least a little poetic value, so I rattled all the way to Hackney Wick.

It was a peculiar spot for a garage, I thought, inexplicably tucked away on Rothbury Road between a few discount furniture warehouses and an enormous building site advertising a complex of unfinished spacious apartments for sale. The entire length of the building site was hidden behind panelling that was, in turn, smothered in vibrant graffiti. Right alongside that, camouflaged in the same palette of spray paint, was a garage with a small, almost imperceptible sign: Meadows Motors.

The place didn’t open until eight – it was a couple of minutes past seven – but I’d only just managed to get the car up against the kerb when the garage door lifted, and Charli’s brother came out like a hungry man to the sound of a dinner bell. He was dressed in a beanie hat and overalls and his face widened into something between a horrified gape and a grin when he saw the mess I was driving; the pound signs were practically visible in his eyes. From behind him, another mechanic appeared, this one remarkably handsome with long red hair, a Norse deity of a man who was apparently apathetic to the cacophony.

‘Elliot Rook!’ Delroy Meadows said as I got out of the car. ‘What’d you do, enter into one of those demolition derbies?’

‘Kids,’ I replied. ‘Think you can work some magic on her?’

He drew air between his teeth in a pained hiss and circled the car, admiring the mob’s handiwork with a stern, appraising look. ‘Well, she’s never going to dance again.’

‘A write-off?’ The air caught in my throat.

‘Hard to say for sure without getting underneath her for a look.’

‘Whatever it takes.’

He turned to his employee and gesticulated with both hands, signing. The employee did the same back. They conversed silently like that. For a moment, I had the funny idea that this was a neat trick, something they’d learned between themselves to privately discuss how badly they could fleece their customers. But mechanics would never need to go to such lengths to have a customer’s pants down.

Delroy caught my eye. ‘Danny here’s a deaf-mute. Like that pinball song.’

‘I think that’s a rather outdated way of putting it,’ I told him.

He shrugged. ‘Who’s he going to tell?’

Danny, who had been watching our lips closely, pointed a finger at Delroy and then began to beat his own chest with both fists like a gorilla. They both laughed, Danny silently, and shadow-boxed one another. I felt acutely out